/ 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


( 


REPRESENTATIVE 

ESSAYS    IN 
MODERN   THOUGHT 

A  Basis  for  Composition 

EDITED    BY 

HARRISON    ROSS    STEEVES,    Ph.D. 

ASSISTANT   PROFESSOR   OF    ENGLISH   IN    COLUMBIA    UNIVERSITY 

AND 

FRANK    HUMPHREY    RISTINE,    Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR    OF    ENGLISH    LANGUAGE    AND    LITERATURE 
IN    HAMILTON    COLLEGE 


AMERICAN    BOOK    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK.  CINCINNATI  CHICAGO 


Copyright,  1913,  by 
H.   R.   8TEEVES   AND   F.   H.   RISTINE 

Copyright,  1913,  in  Great  Britain. 


REPRESKNTATIVK   ESSAYS 

W.  P.    9 


c  c 
c  «  c 


PREFACE 

In  presenting  this  volume  to  teachers  of  Englis?i  composi- 
tion, the  editors  realize  that  it  can  hardly  fail  to  suffer  from 
the  suspicion  of  novelty  which  confronts  new  publications  in  a 
conservative  educational  field.  It  is  hoped,  however,  that  ini- 
tial distrust  of  the  book  because  of  its  novelty  will  not  outlive  a 
fair  trial  of  the  methods  and  materials  which  it  offers.  This 
hope  is  based  upon  successful  experiment  with  much  of  the  sub- 
stance of  the  volume  among  students  as  varied  and  as  cosmo- 
politan as  the  undergraduates  in  Columbia  College,  and  upon 
the  generous  and  often  enthusiastic  support  that  the  underlying 
idea  has  received  from  prominent  educators  throughout  the 
country  who  have  had  occasion  to  pass  judgment  upon  its  value. 

Tn  the  preparation  of  the  collection  for  classroom  use  we 
have  prefixed  to  each  essay  a  brief  introductory  note  intended 
to  give  relevant  biographical  facts  and  to  assist  the  student  to 
an  understanding  of  the  design  of  the  work.  In  addition,  where 
suggestions  as  to  other  material  of  direct  bearing  upon  the  sub- 
ject under  discussion  seemed  to  us  to  be  of  value  for  collateral 
reading,  we  have  included  references  to  such  writings.  Some 
of  the  authors'  footnotes  to  the  essays  have  been  omitted  as 
foreign  to  the  purpose  of  the  book,  and  others  have  been  sup- 
plied wherever  the  text  seemed  to  require  elucidation  or  inter- 
pretation. Our  principle  has  been,  however,  to  restrict  the 
formal  teaching  apparatus  of  the  volume  to  the  general  intro- 
duction, and  to  encumber  the  selections  themselves  with  the 
minimum  of  annotation.  In  the  printing  of  the  essays  we 
have  followed  accurately  the  original  forms,  retaining  sub-titles 
and  numbered  divisions  where  these  were  essential  to  the 
logical  arrangement  of  the  essay. 

This  volume  includes  substantially  the  essays  which,  when 
we  first  discussed  the  plan  of  publication,  we  chose  tentatively 

•  •• 

lU 


174929 


IV  PREFACE 

as  the  most  available  for  our  purpose.  That  what  seemed  to 
us  the  ideal  plan  should  be  brought  to  completion  with  scarcely 
a  modification  is  for  us  a  matter  for  special  gratitude,  since  any 
effort  to  reproduce  on  an  extensive  scale  writings  still  in  copy- 
right must  be  conditioned  largely  upon  the  generosity  of  pub- 
lishers. Our  thanks  for  publishing  privileges,  therefore,  are 
emphatically  more  than  formal.  We  have  been  enabled  to 
use  copyright  material  through  the  kindness  of  Mr.  Henry 
James,  Jr.,  Dr.  Dole,  Mr.  Mallock,  Professor  Hobhouse,  Pro- 
fessor Clark,  President  Hadley,  and  Mr.  Harrison;  and  by  the 
permission  of  Messrs.  D.  Apple  ton  and  Company,  Henry  Holt 
and  Company,  Longmans,  Green,  and  Company,  John  Murray, 
The  Macmillan  Company,  the  American  Association  for  Inter- 
national Conciliation,  the  Fortnightly  Review,  the  Harvard  Theo- 
logical Review,  and  the  Atlantic  Monthly.  We  desire  also  to 
express  our  acknowledgments  to  Viscount  Morley  and  Dr. 
Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  and  to  Macmillan  and  Company  (Lon- 
don), the  Popular  Science  Monthly,  the  Contemporary  Review, 
and  the  Edinburgh  Co-operative  Printing  Company  Limited. 

The  task  of  selecting  the  essays  and  preparing  the  collection 
for  publication  has  been  materially  lightened  by  the  friendly 
cooperation  of  a  number  of  our  colleagues  who  have  interested 
themselves  in  the  undertaking.  We  are  under  special  obliga- 
tion to  Professor  John  Erskine,  to  whom  in  large  measure  the 
credit  for  the  educational  program  must  be  given,  and  who  has 
aided  our  work  with  many  helpful  suggestions.  Others  to  whom 
we  have  been  indebted  for  advice  dnd  active  interest  are  Pro- 
fessor Frederick  J.  E.  Woodbridge,  Professor  Herbert  G.  Lord, 
Professor  Ashley  H.  Thorndike,  Professor  Robert  A.  Harper, 
Professor  Monroe  Smith,  Mr.  Frederick  P.  Keppel,  Dean  of 
Columbia  College,  Professor  Joseph  V.  Denney,  of  Ohio  State 
University,  Dr.  Carl  Van  Doren,  Mr.  John  J.  Coss,  and  Dr. 

Ernest  Stagg  Whitin. 

H.  R.  S. 

F.  H.  R. 

Columbia  University, 
June,  191 2. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I.    Matthew  Arnold  :  Sweetness  and  Light      .        .        .  i 

II.    Thomas  Henry  Huxley  :   Science  and  Culture    .        .  28 

III.  William  Kingdon  Clifford  :  The  Ethics  of  Belief    .  46 

IV.  William  James  :   The  Will  to  Believe  .        .        .        -73 
V.    John  Stuart  Mill  :  Of  the  Liberty  of  Thought  and 

Discussion 98 

VI.  John  Morley  :  Of  the  Possible  Utility  of  Error  .  141 
VII.    William  Hurrel  Mallock  :    The  Scientific  Bases  of 

Optimism 163 

VIII.    Thomas  Henry  Huxley:    Darwin  on  the  Origin  of 

Species 199 

IX.    Alfred  Russel  Wallace  :    Darwinism  as  applied  to 

Man 238 

X.    John  Tyndall  :   The  Belfast  Address   .        .        .        .272 

XL     Charles  Fletcher  Dole  :  Truth  and  Immortality      .  321 

XII.    Leonard  Trelawney  Hobhouse  :  Law  and  Justice      .  341 

XIII.  Henry   Sumner  Maine  :    The  Prospects   of  Popular 

Government 376 

XIV.  Arthur  Twining  Hadley  :  Ethics  of  Corporate  Man- 

agement .        . 412 

XV.    William  Morris  :  The  Labor  Question  from  the  So- 
cialist Standpoint 430 

XVI.    John  Bates  Clark  :  Education  and  the  Socialist  Move- 
ment           454 

XVII,    John  Stuart  Mill  :  The  Subjection  of  Women   .        .  470 

XVIII.    Frederic  Harrison  :  The  Future  of  Woman        .        .  502 

XIX.    William  James  :  The  Moral  Equivalent  of  War        .  519 


4. 


INTRODUCTION 

This  book  has  been  compiled  under  the  conviction  that 
composition  can  be  taught  more  effectively  with  ideas 
rather  than  with  literary  models  or  set  exercises  as  the  point 
of  departure.  That  this  conviction  is  opposed  to  some 
time-honored  ideas  of  composition,  the  editors  are  fully 
aware.  They  are  also  aware  that  most  teachers  are  agreed 
that  the  old  methods  of  teaching  composition  are  unsatis- 
factory; and  it  is  the  prevalence  of  this  opinion  which 
lends  support  to  the  belief  that  a  book  presenting  a  new 
method  of  handling  the  subject  of  composition  ought  not 
to  be  unwelcome,  especially  if  the  method  has  been  tried 
successfully  for  some  time  at  a  representative  university. 

To  many  it  must  seem  that  one  obvious  reason  for  the 
failure  of  the  older  methods  to  accomplish  the  best  results 
lies  in  the  inadequacy  of  the  material  commonly  employed 
in  composition  courses.  This  material  usually  consists  of 
literary  selections,  which,  for  students  of  the  age  and  train- 
ing of  the  average  freshman,  generally  fail  to  sustain  in- 
terest; or  it  descends  to  trivialities,  in  overworking,  fre- 
quently by  the  "daily  theme"  method,  the  small  concerns 
of  school  or  outside  life. 

In  the  behef  that  a  new  and  more  stimulating  subject 
matter  was  desirable,  the  teachers  at  Columbia  endeavored 
a  few  years  ago  to  provide  material  which  when  used  as 
a  basis  for  composition  would  serve  the  purpose  of  not 
merely  developing  a  formal  accuracy  in  writing,  but  of 
expanding  the  student's  ideas  and  increasing  the  number 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

of  his  points  of  contact  with  vital  questions.  In  selecting 
more  or  less  classic  approaches  to  such  provinces  as  biol- 
ogy, philosophy,  modern  poHtics,  sociology,  and  practical 
rehgion,  we  relied  upon  the  student's  desire  to  know  what 
fields  of  knowledge  he  before  him  in  his  academic  work,  and 
we  rehed  upon  his  natural  curiosity  in  questions  which, 
once  presented,  challenge  him,  as  they  challenge  everybody, 
for  answers.  The  only  real  problems  were :  first,  to  find 
material  sufficiently  simple  and  concrete  in  presentation  to 
insure  its  fitness  for  this  special  period  of  intellectual 
development ;  and  second,  to  make  this  material  available 
in  a  single  volume,  as  naturally  the  hbrary  facilities  were 
overtaxed  to  provide  a  large  number  of  students  simultane- 
ously with  the  required  reading. 

The  result  of  the  experiments  with  this  subject  matter 
at  Columbia  during  the  past  two  years  has  been  an  im- 
mediate and  emphatic  response  to  the  stimulating  interest 
of  the  questions  taken  up,  once  the  students  had  adjusted 
themselves  to  the  idea.  There  was  scarcely  an  essay  in 
the  course  which  had  not  an  appearance  of  forbidding 
profundity,  or  which  did  not  seem  to  presuppose  a  more 
special  knowledge  of  a  particular  field  than  the  average 
freshman  has  mastered.  But  if  the  writing  possessed 
sufficient  irritancy  to  start  speculation  over  the  question 
presented,  the  initial  objection  to  profundity  disappeared 
and  left  the  student  convinced  that  his  own  common 
sense  and  reasoning  powers  were  sufiicient  equipment  for  an 
approach  to  any  of  the  subjects  offered. 

The  selection  of  this  series  of  essays  as  subject  matter 
for  a  course  in  Enghsh  composition  does  not  necessarily 
restrict  the  essays  to  that  use,  as  the  cultural  relations  of 
the  material  are  sufficiently  broad  to  adapt  it  to  many 
educational  ends.     The  important  fact  is  that  in  our  mod- 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

ern  college  curriculums  adequate  provision  is  seldom  made 
for  allowing  the  student's  stock  of  ideas  on  vital  ques- 
tions an  opportunity  for  better  organization  and  greater 
expansion,  or  for  orienting  him  in  the  field  of  collegiate 
studies.  Possibly  much  of  the  diffuseness  and  ineffective- 
ness of  the  elective  system  may  be  traced  to  this  very  condi- 
tion. It  may  not  be  the  particular  province  of  the  English 
department  to  remedy  these  deficiencies,  but  it  seems  clear 
that  since  teachers  of  English  are  so  frequently  obliged 
to  go  hunting  for  subject  matter,  such  an  opportunity 
may  profitably  be  accepted,  particularly  if  it  serve  the 
purpose  of  accomphshing  two  important  educational  ends 
at  once.  With  the  general  and  commendable  tendency  to 
establish  a  definite  coordination  between  the  various  sub- 
jects of  undergraduate  study,  however,  there  can  be  little 
question  that  whether  the  "course  in  ideas"  is  given  as  phi- 
losophy, history,  English,  or  as  the  growingly  popular  general 
culture  course,  in  any  event  it  has  a  place  of  profound  value 
in  the  college  curriculum,  and  is  probably  most  beneficial 
when  presented  as  one  of  the  first  steps  in  the  student's  work. 
A  device  which  experience  has  shown  to  be  very  successful 
has  been  followed  all  but  uniformly  throughout  the  present 
volume.  Whenever  a  problem  has  been  introduced  about 
which  "  much  may  be  said  on  both  sides,"  two  typical  essays, 
representing  the  two  points  of  view,  have  been  offered.  For 
this  reason  Arnold's  Sweetness  and  Light,  which  upholds  the 
traditional  classical  culture,  is  opposed  to  Huxley's  Science 
and  Culture,  which  defends  the  viewpoint  of  modern  science. 
W.  K.  Clifford's  Ethics  of  Belief,  emphasizing  scientific 
skepticism  as  a  moral  obligation,  is  followed  by  Professor 
James's  Will  to  Believe,  which  justifies  the  acceptance  with- 
out proof  of  religious  beliefs.  Huxley's  Darwinian  essay  and 
Tyndall's  Belfast  Address,  both  of  which  at  least  suggest  a 


X  INTRODUCTION 

materialistic  philosophy,  are  contrasted  with  Dr.  Dole's 
Truth  and  Immortality,  a  reasoned  argument  for  belief  in  a 
future  Ufe.  The  two  essays  on  sociaHsm  and  the  two  on 
the  present  position  of  women  afford  similar  contrasts  iji 
treatment.  Such  a  grouping  of  mutually  opposed  con- 
structive ideas  is  of  course  emphatically  more  stimulating 
both  to  the  imagination  and  the  reason  than  the  presentation 
of  one  side  of  questions  which  have  been  historically  matters 
of  dispute.  In  the  case  of  such  works,  however,  as  Mr. 
Mallock's  Scientific  Bases  of  Optimism,  a  criticism  of  a  typi- 
cally modern  philosophical  position,  and  Sir  Henry  Sumner 
Maine's  Prospects  of  Popular  Government,  a  British  analysis 
of  the  institution  of  democracy,  the  issues  defined  are  aca- 
demic rather  than  popular,  and  are  presented  with  so  much 
originality  and  force  that  they  are  probably  sufficient  in 
theniselves  to  establish  the  high  interest  of  the  questions  with 
which  they  deal,  without  the  risk  of  cultivating  prejudices. 
Since  this  volume  may  represent  a  new  and  unfamiHar 
educational  program  to  many,  a  word  as  to  our  method  of 
handling  these  essays  as  materials  for  composition  may  not 
be  out  of  order.  In  the  first  place,  it  has  been  our  custom 
to  use  this  reading  for  the  second  half  of  the  freshman  year, 
and  to  prepare  the  way  for  this  term's  work  by  composition 
drill  during  the  first  term,  by  impromptu  themes  written  in 
class  and  based  upon  assigned  selections  that  give  oppor- 
tunity for  an  understanding  of  the  methods  of  scientific  in- 
quiry. An  effective  method  of  approach  in  this  first  term  lies 
in  the  use  of  historical  memoirs,  autobiography,  books  of 
the  Bible,  and  literary  works  of  historical  flavor,  for  the 
purpose  of  establishing  inductively  some  primary  concep- 
tions of  social,  pohtical,  and  moral  evolution.  A  variety  of 
material  of  this  sort  will  immediately  suggest  itself :  for  ex- 
ample. Homer,  Sophocles,  or  ^schylus ;  Plutarch's  Lives  ;  the 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

less  intricate  dialogues  of  Plato,  such  as  the  Protagoras; 
Norse  sagas  —  or  decently  faithful  reproductions  of  their 
spirit,  as  Morris's  Lovers  of  Gudrun;  parts  of  Cellini's  auto- 
biography;  Chesterfield's  Letters, — anything  which  depicts 
vividly  the  influence  of  custom  upon  ideas  and  actions.  We 
have  been  accustomed  to  alternate  this  reading  with  literary 
work  less  f  amihar  to  the  average  student,  and  generally  less  in 
literary  pretentiousness  than  that  which  his  forced  prepara- 
tory school  instruction  has  brought  him  to  respect — and  some- 
times to  detest  — without  clear  reason.  Works  of  this  class 
might  include  the  more  unfamiliar  plays  of  Shakespeare ; 
simple  narrative  poems  like  Wordsworth's  Michael  and  Ten- 
nyson's Enoch  Arden;  the  Ingoldshy  Legends ;  novels  which 
invite  discussion,  like  Jane  Eyre,  Wuthering  Heights,  David 
Balfour,  Sentimental  Tommy ;  even  the  less  philosophical  of 
the  novels  of  Meredith  or  Hardy  —  The  Ordeal  of  Richard 
Feverel,  or  The  Mayor  of  Casterhridge.  The  effect  of  this 
infusion  of  lighter  literature  is  to  ehminate  the  student's 
sense  of  strangeness  in  a  new  field  by  enlarging  at  the  same 
time  his  knowledge  of  a  field  in  which  he  already  feels  some 
degree  of  acquaintance. 

With  this  foundation,  then,  established  during  the  first 
term,  we  find  the  student  relieved  more  or  less  of  the 
tendency  to  argue  and  think  upon  presumptive  grounds,  and 
generally  receptive  to  the  discussion  of  questions  which 
touch  his  inner  Hfe  and  his  relations  to  men  and  institu- 
tions. 

In  the  second  term's  work  we  have  been  accustomed  to  as- 
sign one  piece  of  reading  each  week,  not  limiting  ourselves 
to  the  series  of  essays  printed  here  —  for,  once  more,  this 
volume  merely  makes  available  a  number  of  important  es- 
says which  are  generally  inaccessible  to  a  large  body  of 
students  —  but  supplementing  our  special  inquiry  with  ma- 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

terial  from  the  more  purely  literary  field,  as  it  may  seem 
expedient.  Large  possibilities  in  this  direction  may  be  seen 
in  both  the  highways  and  byways  of  Hterature  of  the  late 
nineteenth  century,  in  poems  such  as  Tennyson's  In  Memo- 
riam,  in  modern  editorials  or  magazine  articles,  in  short 
stories  interpretative  of  Hfe,  such  as  Hardy's  Fellow-Towns- 
men, Stevenson's  Ebb  Tide,  Kiphng's  Mowgh  stories,  or  in 
plays  of  the  most  modern  of  moderns,  if  the  student  is  kept 
properly  aware  of  the  glamour  of  the  cleverly  expressed  half 
truth. 

On  each  of  our  weekly  assignments  we  require  impromptu 
themes  of  about  five  hundred  words,  written  in  the  class- 
room, upon  assigned  topics  which  suggest  the  salient  points 
of  the  work  under  consideration.^  Every  effort  is  made  to 
encourage  the  student  to  think  for  himself  and  to  state  his 
own  position  on  the  questions  involved.  The  usual  result  is 
that  the  student  discovers,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  that  he 
has  ideas  on  questions  of  reHgion,  morals,  poHtics,  social 
conduct,  and  the  like,  and  develops  an  interest  and  fluency 
in  expressing  them  that  have  been  noticeably  absent  in  his 
previous  compositions.  With  his  interest  once  aroused  and 
his  mind  free,  the  frank  dislike  of  composition  work  too  often 
inspired  by  distasteful  or  trivial  subject  matter  may  quickly 
disappear,  as  well  as  the  self-consciousness  in  writing  that  a 

^  The  editors  have  not  equipped  the  essays  with  suggested  topics  for 
themes,  beheving  that  this  part  of  the  program  should  be  left  to  the  judg- 
ment of  the  teacher  in  each  case.  The  kind  of  topics  thought  most  effective, 
however,  for,  say,  Tyndall's  Belfast  Address,  may  be  indicated  by  examples  : 
Liberty  of  discussion  as  applied  to  scientific  thought,  The  experimental  method, 
Bislwp  Butler  ajid  the  disciple  of  Lucretius,  The  special  provinces  of  science  and 
religion. 

The  idea  is  that  the  topics  should  be  of  such  a  nature  as  to  allow  the 
student  no  opportunity  of  merely  reproducing  the  argument  or  substance 
of  the  essay,  but  rather  to  encourage  him  to  form  his  own  opinions  on  the 
questions  presented  and  to  give  him  all  possible  latitude  in  expressing  them. 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

too  labored  application  of  rhetorical  formulas  is  apt  to 
develop. 

The  following  meeting  of  the  class  is  taken  up  with  a 
general  discussion  of  the  ideas  evolved  in  the  writing ;  and 
in  this  discussion  it  is  not  ordinarily  necessary  to  resort  to 
artificial  methods  of  sustaining  interest.  Such  discussions, 
which  are  by  their  nature  free,  informal,  and  even  intimate, 
may  frequently  be  pursued  into  other  hours  of  meeting; 
but  in  many  cases  the  necessities  of  composition  work  re- 
quire attention  to  matters  of  form  —  exclusive  of  mechanical 
errors,  which  we  believe  should  be  treated  only  in  individual 
conferences  —  and  this  must  inevitably  reduce  the  time 
devoted  to  the  "ideas"  part  of  the  course.  Our  program  of 
reading  and  discussion  is  obviously  best  adapted  to  students 
whose  preparatory  training  in  the  principles  of  composi- 
tion has  been  adequate.  On  the  other  hand,  students  whose 
preparation  has  been  deficient  should  be  segregated  in  a 
special  section  and  given  instruction  adapted  to  their  needs, 
lest  their  presence  in  the  regular  class  hinder  the  profitable 
employment  of  the  "course  in  ideas."  In  the  case  of  stu- 
dents whose  composition  is  not  radically  faulty  but  whose 
intellectual  maturity  may  be  below  that  of  the  average  fresh- 
man, discussion  of  the  fundamental  problems  in  the  assign- 
ment might  very  well  precede  the  writing  of  the  themes. 
In  fact,  wherever  the  substance  of  the  assignment  is  really 
profound,  or  its  treatment  unusually  obscure,  an  attempt 
at  interpretation  or  at  least  clarification  of  the  work  is  to 
be  recommended  as  introductory  to  the  writing  itself.  But 
whether  discussion  of  the  essay  precedes  or  follows  the 
writing,  the  key  to  effective  understanding  is  discussion 
founded  upon  common  sense,  and  free  from  even  an  intima- 
tion of  dogmatic  or  pedantic  assurance. 

This  suggested  program  covers  a  great  deal  more  material 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

than  could  possibly  be  utiKzed  to  full  advantage  in  a  single 
term's  work.  We  have  intimated  the  extent  of  the  field  of 
choice,  however,  in  the  behef  that  further  suggestion  may 
facilitate  the  process  of  selection  for  the  teacher  for  whom 
this  program  is  still  only  experimental. 

It  is  probably  unnecessary  to  point  out  that  none  of  the 
essays  in  this  volume  are  intended  by  the  editors  to  represent 
their  judgments  upon  the  issues  involved.  Whether  right 
or  wrong,  both  conservative  and  radical  points  of  view  have 
been  given.  In  many  cases,  however,  where  a  difference  of 
opinion  is  clearly  inevitable,  but  where  the  presentation  of 
one  side  of  the  question  defines  the  objections  that  might 
be  urged  by  the  opposition ,  no  effort  has  been  made  to  ad- 
here to  a  systematic  impartiality.  The  purpose  of  the  vol- 
ume is,  after  all,  to  encourage  the  student  to  form  his  own 
opinions  upon  proper  evidence ;  and  to  this  end  it  is  not 
necessary  in  every  instance  to  offer  him  a  choice  of  opinions 
already  formulated. 

Finally,  these  essays  are  in  many  cases  not  the  last  word 
of  technical  accuracy  or  theoretical  subtlety.  What  we 
have  sought,  and  what  we  beheve  we  have  succeeded  in  se- 
curing in  every  work  offered  here,  is  a  stimulating  presenta- 
tion, sufficiently  general  and  dignified  in  its  handling  of  the 
apparent  truth  to  lay  just  claim  to  permanent  esteem,  even 
though,  in  some  cases,  later  intellectual  progress  may 
demonstrate  the  work  to  be  partially  deficient  in  method 
or  in  scientific  detail. 


REPRESENTATIVE  ESSAYS  IN  MODERN 
THOUGHT:  A  BASIS  FOR  COMPOSITION 


SWEETNESS   AND    LIGHT 
Matthew  Arnold 

[Matthew  Arnold  (1822-1888),  son  of  the  famous  educator,  Dr.  Thomas 
Arnold,  is  well  known  as  a  poet,  but  more  particularly  as  a  critic  of  htera- 
ture,  religion,  poUtics,  and  society,  and  as  the  foremost  apostle  of  culture 
and  champion  of  classical  education  in  a  scientific  and  materialistic  age. 

The  following  essay  is  admirably  illustrative  of  this  latter  phase  of  his 
activity,  and  is  the  recognized  classic  exposition  of  the  humanist  point  of 
view.  In  it  Arnold  sets  forth  his  ideal  of  culture  as  the  panacea  for  the 
social  evils  of  the  time  and  as  the  means  of  attaining  a  harmonious  and  equal 
development  of  all  those  powers  in  man  that  are  essential  for  perfect  hiunan 
nature.  This  view  of  culture  underlies  Arnold's  protest,  set  forth  later  in 
Literature  and  Science,  against  the  growing  movement  of  the  age  to  exalt  the 
sciences  over  the  humanities  in  education.  Arnold,  while  not  blind  to  the 
importance  of  modern  scientific  truth,  maintains  that  the  pursuit  of  science 
tends  toward  a  one-sided  development  and  leaves  man  with  the  greater  part 
of  his  nature  unawakened  and  as  unprepared  as  ever  for  the  practical  duty 
of  living  a  harmonious,  well  balanced,  and  perfected  human  life,  which  the 
study  of  the  classics  and  the  old  humanities  alone  can  bring  about.  This 
contention  is  answered  in  the  next  selection  by  Huxley,  who  upholds  the 
cultural  and  educational  value  of  the  physical  sciences. 

Sweetness  and  Light  was  delivered  as  Arnold's  last  lecture  in  the  chair 
of  poetry  at  Oxford,  and  first  appeared  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine  for  July, 
1867,  under  the  title  Culture  and  Its  Enemies.  In  1869  it  was  published 
in  book  form  as  the  opening  chapter  of  the  volume  Culture  and  Anarchy.] 

The  disparagers  of  culture  make  its  motive  curiosity;  some- 
times, indeed,  they  make  its  motive  mere  exclusiveness  and 
vanity.  The  culture  which  is  supposed  to  plume  itself  on  a 
smattering  of  Greek  and  Latin  is  a  culture  which  is  begotten  by 


2  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

nothing  so  intellectual  as  curiosity ;  it  is  valued  either  out  of 
sheer  vanity  and  ignorance  or  else  as  an  engine  of  social  and 
class  distinction,  separating  its  holder,  like  a  badge  or  title,  from 
other  people  who  have  not  got  it.  No  serious  man  would  call 
this  culture,  or  attach  any  value  to  it,  as  culture,  at  all.  To  find 
the  real  ground  for  the  very  differing  estimate  which  serious 
people  will  set  upon  culture,  we  must  find  some  motive  for 
culture  in  the  terms  of  which  may  lie  a  real  ambiguity ;  and  such 
a  motive  the  word  curiosity  gives  us. 

I  have  before  now  pointed  out  that  we  English  do  not,  like  the 
foreigners,  use  this  word  in  a  good  sense  as  well  i  in  a  bad  sense. 
With  us  the  word  is  always  used  in  a  somewhat  disapproving 
sense.  A  liberal  and  intelligent  eagerness  about  the  things  of  the 
mind  may  be  meant  by  a  foreigner  when  he  speaks  of  curiosity, 
but  with  us  the  word  always  conveys  a  certain  notion  of  frivolous 
and  unedifying  activity.  In  the  Quarterly  Review,  some  little 
time  ago,  was  an  estimate  of  the  celebrated  French  critic,  M. 
Sainte-Beuve,  and  a  very  inadequate  estimate  it  in  my  judgment 
was.  And  its  inadequacy  consisted  chiefly  in  this :  that  in  our 
English  way  it  left  out  of  sight  the  double  sense  really  involved 
in  the  word  curiosity,  tMnking  enough  was  said  to  stamp  M. 
Sainte-Beuve  with  blame  if  it  was  said  that  he  was  impelled  in 
his  operations  as  a  critic  by  curiosity,  and  omitting  either  to 
perceive  that  M.  Sainte-Beuve  himself,  and  many  other  people 
with  him,  would  consider  that  this  was  praiseworthy  and  not 
blameworthy,  or  to  point  out  why  it  ought  really  to  be  accounted 
worthy  of  blame  and  not  of  praise.  For  as  there  is  a  curiosity 
about  intellectual  matters  which  is  futile,  and  mer  'y  a  disease, 
so  there  is  certainly  a  curiosity,  —  a  desire  after  the  things  of  the 
mind  simply  for  their  own  sakes  and  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
them  as  they  are,  —  which  is,  in  an  intelligent  being,  natural 
and  laudable.  Nay,  and  the  very  desire  to  see  things  as  they  are 
imphes  a  balance  and  regulation  of  mind  which  is  not  often 
attained  without  fruitful  effort,  and  which  is  the  very  opposite  of 
the  blind  and  diseased  impulse  of  mind  which  is  what  we  mean  tc 
blame  when  we  blame  curiosity.     Montesquieu  says  :  "The  first 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT  3 

motive  which  ought  to  impel  us  to  study  is  the  desire  to  augment 
the  excellence  of  our  nature,  and  to  render  an  intelligent  being 
yet  more  intelligent."  This  is  the  true  ground  to  assign  for 
the  genuine  scientific  passion,  however  manifested,  and  for  cul- 
ture, viewed  simply  as  a  fruit  of  this  passion ;  and  it  is  a  worthy 
ground,  even  though  we  let  the  term  curiosity  stand  to  describe 
it. 

But  there  is  of  culture  another  view,  in  which  not  solely  the 
scientific  passion,  the  sheer  desire  to  see  things  as  they  are,  nat- 
ural and  pro^  ,jr  in  an  inteUigent  being,  appears  as  the  ground  of 
it.  There  is  a  view  in  which  all  the  love  of  our  neighbor,  the  im- 
pulses towards  action,  help,  and  beneficence,  the  desire  for  re- 
moving human  error,  clearing  human  confusion,  and  diminishing 
human  misery,  the  noble  aspiration  to  leave  the  world  better  and 
happier  than  we  found  it,  —  motives  eminently  such  as  are  called 
social,  —  come  in  as  part  of  the  grounds  of  culture,  and  the  main 
and  preeminent  part.  Culture  is  then  properly  described  not  as 
having  its  origin  in  curiosity,  but  as  having  its  origin  in  the  love 
of  perfection ;  it  is  a  study  of  perfection.  It  moves  by  the  force, 
not  merely  or  primarily  of  the  scientific  passion  for  pure  knowl- 
edge but  also  of  the  moral  and  social  passion  for  doing  good. 
As,  h  the  first  view  of  it,  we  took  for  its  wortliy  motto  Montes- 
quiei'  s  words :  "To  render  an  intelligent  being  yet  more  intelli- 
gent ! "  so,  in  the  second  view  of  it,  there  is  no  better  motto  which 
it  can  have  than  these  words  of  Bishop  Wilson :  "To  make  reason 
and  the  will  of  God  prevail  1" 

Only,  whereas  the  passion  for  doing  good  is  apt  to  be  overhasty 
in  determining  what  reason  and  the  will  of  God  say,  because  its 
turn  is  for  acting  rather  than  thinking  and  it  wants  to  be  begin- 
ning to  act  ;<  and  whereas  it  is  apt  to  take  its  own  conceptions, 
which  proceed  from  its  own  state  of  development  and  share  in  all 
the  imperfections  and  immaturities  of  this,  for  a  basis  of  action ; 
what  listinguishes  culture  is,  that  it  is  possessed  by  the  scientific 
passion  as  well  as  by  the  passion  of  doing  good ;  that  it  demands 
worthy  notions  of  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  and  does  not  readily 
suffer  its  own  xrude  conceptions  to  substitute  themselves  for 


4  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

them.  And  knowing  that  no  action  or  institution  can  be  salutary 
and  stable  which  is  not  based  on  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  it  is 
not  so  bent  on  acting  and  instituting,  even  with  the  great  aim  of 
diminishing  human  error  and  misery  ever  before  its  thoughts, 
but  that  it  can  remember  that  acting  and  instituting  are  of  little 
use,  unless  we  know  how  and  what  we  ought  to  act  and  to 
institute. 

This  culture  is  more  interesting  and  more  far-reaching  than 
that  other,  which  is  founded  solely  on  the  scientific  passion  for 
knowing.     But  it  needs  times  of    faith  and  ardor,  times  when 
the  intellectual  horizon  is  opening  and  widening  all  round  us,  to 
flourish  in.    And  is  not  the  close  and  bounded  intellectual  horizon 
within  which  we  have  long  lived  and  moved  now  lifting  up,  and  are 
not  new  lights  finding  free  passage  to  shine  in  upon  us?     For 
a  long  time  there  was  no  passage  for  them  to  make  their  way  in 
upon  us,  and  then  it  was  of  no  use  to  think  of  adapting  the  world's 
action  to  them.     Where  was  the  hope  of  making  reason  and  the 
will  of  God  prevail  among  people  who  had  a  routine  which  they 
had  christened  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  in  which  they  were 
inextricably  bound,  and  beyond  which  they  had  no  power  of 
looking  ?     But  now  the  iron  force  of  adhesion  to  the  old  routine, 
—  social,  political,  religious,  —  has  wonderfully  yielded ;    the 
iron  force  of  exclusion  of  all  which  is  new  has  wonderfully  yielded. 
The  danger  now  is,  not  that  people  should  obstinately  refuse  to 
allow  anything  but  their  old  routine  to  pass  for  reason  and  the 
will  of  God,  but  either  that  they  shotdd  allow  some  novelty  or 
other  to  pass  for  these  too  easily,  or  else  that  they  should  under- 
rate the  importance  of  them  altogether,  and  think  it  enough  to 
follow  action  for  its  own  sake,  without  troubling  themselves  to 
make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail  therein.     Now,  then,  is 
the  moment  for  culture  to  be  of  service,  culture  which  believes 
in  making  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail,  believes  in  perfec- 
tion, is  the  study  and  pursuit  of  perfection,  and  is  no  longer 
debarred,  by  a  rigid,  invincible  exclusion  of  whatever  is  new, 
from  getting  acceptance  for  its  ideas,  simply  because  they  are 
new. 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT  5 

The  moment  this  view  of  culture  is  seized,  the  moment  it  is 
regarded  not  solely  as  the  endeavor  to  see  things  as  they  are,  to 
draw  towards  a  knowledge  of  the  universal  order  which  seems 
to  be  intended  and  aimed  at  in  the  world,  and  which  it  is  a  man's 
happiness  to  go  along  with  or  his  misery  to  go  counter  to,  —  to 
learn,  in  short,  the  will  of  God,  —  the  moment,  I  say,  culture  is 
considered  not  merely  as  the  endeavor  to  see  and  learn  this,  but  as 
the  endeavor,  also,  to  make  it  prevail,  the  moral,  social,  and  be- 
neficent character  of  culture  becomes  manifest.  The  mere 
endeavor  to  see  and  learn  the  truth  for  ovu  own  personal 
satisfaction  is  indeed  a  commencement  for  making  it  prevail,  a 
preparing  the  way  for  this,  which  always  serves  this,  and  is 
wrongly,  therefore,  stamped  with  blame  absolutely  in  itself  and 
not  only  in  its  caricature  and  degeneration.  But  perhaps  it  has 
got  stamped  with  blame,  and  disparaged  with  the  dubious  title  of 
curiosity,  because  in  comparison  with  this  wider  endeavor  of 
such  great  and  plain  utility  it  looks  selfish,  petty,  and  unprofit- 
able. 

And  religion,  the  greatest  and  most  important  of  the  efforts 
by  which  the  human  race  has  manifested  its  impulse  to  perfect 
itself, — religion,  that  voice  of  the  deepest  human  experience, — 
does  not  only  enjoin  and  sanction  the  aim  which  is  the  great  aim  of 
culture,  the  aim  of  setting  ourselves  to  ascertain  what  perfection 
is  and  to  make  it  prevail ;  but  also,  in  determining  generally  in 
what  human  perfection  consists,  religion  comes  to  a  conclusion 
identical  with  that  which  culture,  —  seeking  the  determination 
of  this  question  through  all  the  voices  of  human  experience 
which  have  been  heard  upon  it,  of  art,  science,  poetry,  philosophy, 
iiistory,  as  well  as  of  religion,  in  order  to  give  a  greater  fullness 
and  certainty  to  its  solution,  —  likewise  reaches.  Religion  says : 
The  kingdom  of  God  is  within  you;  and  culture,  in  like  manner, 
places  human  perfection  in  an  internal  condition,  in  the  growth 
and  predominance  of  our  humanity  proper,  as  distinguished  from 
our  animality.  It  places  it  in  the  ever  increasing  efficacy  and 
in  the  general  harmonious  expansion  of  those  gifts  of  thought 
and  feeling  which  make  the  peculiar  dignity,  wealth,  and  happi- 


6  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

ness  of  human  nature.  As  I  have  said  on  a  former  occasion: 
"It  is  in  making  endless  additions  to  itself,  in  the  endless  ex- 
pansion of  its  powers,  in  endless  growth  in  wisdom  and  beauty, 
that  the  spirit  of  the  human  race  finds  its  ideal.  To  reach  this 
ideal,  culture  is  an  indispensable  aid,  and  that  is  the  true  value 
of  culture."  Not  a  having  and  a  resting,  but  a  growing  and  a  be- 
coming, is  the  character  of  perfection  as  culture  conceives  it ;  and 
here,  too,  it  coincides  with  religion. 

And  because  men  are  all  members  of  one  great  whole,  and  the 
sympathy  which  is  in  human  nature  will  not  allow  one  member 
to  be  indifferent  to  the  rest  or  to  have  a  perfect  welfare  indepen- 
dent of  the  rest,  the  expansion  of  our  humanity,  to  suit  the  idea 
of  perfection  which  culture  forms,  must  be  a  general  expansion. 
Perfection,  as  culture  conceives  it,  is  not  possible  while  the  indi- 
vidual remains  isolated.  The  individual  is  required,  under  pain 
of  being  stunted  and  enfeebled  in  his  own  development  if  he 
disobeys,  to  carry  others  along  with  him  in  his  march  towards 
perfection,  to  be  continually  doing  all  he  can  to  enlarge  and 
increase  the  volume  of  the  human  stream  sweeping  thitherward. 
And  here,  once  more,  culture  lays  on  us  the  same  obligation  as 
religion,  which  says,  as  Bishop  Wilson  has  admirably  put  it, 
that  "to  promote  the  kingdom  of  God  is  to  increase  and  hasten 
one's  own  happiness." 

But,  finally,  perfection,  —  as  culture  from  a  thorough  dis- 
interested study  of  human  nature  and  human  experience  learns 
to  conceive  it,  —  is  a  harmonious  expansion  of  all  the  powers 
which  make  the  beauty  and  worth  of  human  nature,  and  is  not 
consistent  with  the  overdevelopment  of  any  one  power  at  the 
expense  of  the  rest.  Here  culture  goes  beyond  religion,  as  reli- 
gion is  generally  conceived  by  us. 

If  culture,  then,  is  a  study  of  perfection,  and  of  harmonious 
perfection,  general  perfection,  and  perfection  which  consists 
in  becoming  something  rather  than  in  having  something,  in  an 
inward  condition  of  the  mind  and  spirit,  not  in  an  outward  set  of 
circumstances,  —  it  is  clear  that  culture,  instead  of  being  the 
frivolous  and  useless  thing  which  Mr.  Bright,  and  Mr.  Frederic 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT  7 

Harrison/  and  many  other  Liberals  ^  are  apt  to  call  it,  has  a  very 
important  function  to  fulfill  for  mankind.  And  this  function  is 
particularly  important  in  our  modern  world,  of  which  the  whole 
civilization  is,  to  a  much  greater  degree  than  the  civilization  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  mechanical  and  external,  and  tends  con- 
stantly to  become  more  so.  But  above  all  in  our  own  country 
has  culture  a  weighty  part  to  perform,  because  here  that  me- 
chanical character,  which  civilization  tends  to  take  everywhere, 
is  shown  in  the  most  eminent  degree.  Indeed  nearly  all  the 
characters  of  perfection,  as  culture  teaches  us  to  fix  them,  meet 
in  this  country  with  some  powerful  tendency  which  thwarts 
them  and  sets  them  at  defiance.  The  idea  of  perfection  as  an 
inward  condition  of  the  mind  and  spirit  is  at  variance  with  the 
mechanical  and  material  civilization  in  esteem  with  us,  and  no- 
where, as  I  have  said,  so  much  in  esteem  as  with  us.  The  idea  of 
perfection  as  a  general  expansion  of  the  human  family  is  at  vari- 
ance with  our  strong  individualism,  our  hatred  of  all  limits  to 
the  unrestrained  swing  of  the  individual's  personality,  our 
maxim  of  "every  man  for  himself."  Above  all,  the  idea  of  per- 
fection as  a  harmonious  expansion  of  human  nature  is  at  vari- 
ance with  our  want  of  flexibility,  with  our  inaptitude  for 
seeing  more  than  one  side  of  a  thing,  with  our  intense  energetic 
absorption  in  the  particular  pursuit  we  happen  to  be  following. 
So  culture  has  a  rough  task  to  achieve  in  this  country.  Its 
preachers  have,  and  are  likely  long  to  have,  a  hard  time  of 
it,  and  they  will  much  oftener  be  regarded,  for  a  great  while 
to  come,  as  elegant  or  spurious  Jeremiahs  than  as  friends  and 
benefactors.  That,  however,  will  not  prevent  their  doing  in  the 
end  good  service  if  they  persevere.  And,  meanwhile,  the  mode 
of  action  they  have  to  pursue,  and  the  sort  of  habits  they  must 
fight  against,  ought  to  be  made  quite  clear  for  every  one  to  see, 

^  See  p.  502.  In  an  article  entitled  Culture;  a  Dialogue  (Fortnightly 
Review,  November,  1867),  Mr.  Harrison  criticized  Arnold's  advocacy  of 
culture  as  the  remedy  for  the  evils  of  society.  —  Editors. 

^  The  Liberal  party  in  English  politics  is  made  up  of  adherents  to  pro- 
gressive political  principles.  —  Editors. 


8  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

who  may  be  willing  to  look  at  the  matter  attentively  and  dis- 
passionately. 

Faith  in  machinery^  is,  I  said,  our  besetting  danger ;  often  in 
machinery  most  absurdly  disproportioned  to  the  end  which  this 
machinery,  if  it  is  to  do  any  good  at  all,  is  to  serve ;  but  always 
in  machinery,  as  if  it  had  a  value  in  and  for  itself.  What  is  free- 
dom but  machinery  ?  what  is  population  but  machinery  ?  what 
is  coal  but  machinery  ?  what  are  railroads  but  machinery  ?  what 
is  wealth  but  machinery  ?  what  are,  even,  religious  organizations 
but  machinery  ?  Now  almost  every  voice  in  England  is  accus- 
tomed to  speak  of  these  things  as  if  they  were  precious  ends  in 
themselves,  and  therefore  had  some  of  the  characters  of  perfec- 
tion indisputably  joined  to  them.  I  have  before  now  noticed 
Mr.  Roebuck's  stock  argument  for  proving  the  greatness  and 
happiness  of  England  as  she  is,  and  for  quite  stopping  the 
mouths  of  all  gainsayers.  Mr.  Roebuck  is  never  weary  of  reiter- 
ating this  argument  of  his,  so  I  do  not  know  why  I  should  be 
weary  of  noticing  it.  "  May  not  every  man  in  England  say  what 
he  likes?"  —  Mr.  Roebuck  perpetually  asks;  and  that,  he 
thinks,  is  quite  sufficient,  and  when  every  man  may  say  what  he 
likes,  our  aspirations  ought  to  be  satisfied.  But  the  aspirations 
of  culture,  which  is  the  study  of  perfection,  are  not  satisfied,  un- 
less what  men  say,  when  they  may  say  what  they  like,  is  worth 
saying,  —  has  good  in  it,  and  more  good  than  bad.  In  the  same 
way  the  Times,  replying  to  some  foreign  strictures  on  the  dress, 
looks,  and  behavior  of  the  English  abroad,  urges  that  the  English 
ideal  is  that  every  one  should  be  free  to  do  and  to  look  just  as  he 
likes.  But  culture  indefatigably  tries,  not  to  make  what  each 
raw  person  may  like  the  rule  by  which  he  fashions  himself,  but 
to  draw  ever  nearer  to  a  sense  of  what  is  indeed  beautiful,  grace- 
ful, and  becoming,  and  to  get  the  raw  person  to  like  that. 

And  in  the  same  way  with  respect  to  railroads  and  coal.  Every 
one  must  have  observed  the  strange  language  current  during  the 
late  discussions  as  to  the  possible  failure  of  our  supplies  of  coal. 

^  Arnold  uses  the  word  machinery  throughout  this  essay  in  the  sense  of 
any  kind  of  means  for  the  accomplishment  of  ends.  —  Editors. 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  9 

Our  coal,  thousands  of  people  were  saying,  is  the  real  basis  of 
our  national  greatness ;  if  our  coal  runs  short,  there  is  an  end  of 
the  greatness  of  England.  But  what  is  greatness  ?  —  culture 
makes  us  ask.  Greatness  is  a  spiritual  condition  worthy  to  excite 
love,  interest,  and  admiration ;  and  the  outward  proof  of  possess- 
ing greatness  is  that  we  excite  love,  interest,  and  admiration. 
If  England  were  swallowed  up  by  the  sea  to-morrow,  which 
of  the  two,  a  hundred  years  hence,  would  most  excite  the  love, 
interest,  and  admiration  of  mankind,  —  would  most,  therefore, 
show  the  evidences  of  having  possessed  greatness, — the  England 
of  the  last  twenty  years,  or  the  England  of  Elizabeth,  of  a  time 
of  splendid  spiritual  effort,  but  when  our  coal,  and  our  indus- 
trial operations  depending  on  coal,  were  very  little  developed  ? 
Well,  then,  what  an  unsound  habit  of  mind  it  must  be  which 
makes  us  talk  of  things  like  coal  or  iron  as  constituting  the  great- 
ness of  England,  and  how  salutary  a  friend  is  culture,  bent  on 
seeing  things  as  they  are,  and  thus  dissipating  delusions  of  this 
kind  and  fixing  standards  of  perfection  that  are  real ! 

Wealth,  again,  that  end  to  which  our  prodigious  works  for 
material  advantage  are  directed,  —  the  commonest  of  common- 
places tells  us  how  men  are  always  apt  to  regard  wealth  as  a  pre- 
cious end  in  itself ;  and  certainly  they  have  never  been  so  apt 
thus  to  regard  it  as  they  are  in  England  at  the  present  time. 
Never  did  people  believe  anything  more  firmly  than  nine  English- 
men out  of  ten  at  the  present  day  believe  that  our  greatness  and 
welfare  are  proved  by  our  being  so  very  rich.  Now,  the  use  of 
culture  is  that  it  helps  us,  by  means  of  its  spiritual  standard  of 
perfection,  to  regard  wealth  as  but  machinery,  and  not  only  to 
say  as  a  matter  of  words  that  we  regard  wealth  as  but  machinery, 
but  really  to  perceive  and  feel  that  it  is  so.  If  it  were  not  for  this 
purging  effect  wrought  upon  our  minds  by  culture,  the  whole 
world,  the  future  as  well  as  the  present,  would  inevitably  belong 
to  the  Philistines.^     The  people  who  believe  most  that  our  great- 

'  With  Arnold  a  lerm  of  reproach  for  uncultured  and  commonplace 
people.  The  Philistines  of  the  Old  Testament  were  the  traditional  enemies 
of  the  "chosen  people."     Hence  the  nineteenth-century  application  of  the 


lO  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

ness  and  welfare  are  proved  by  our  being  very  rich,  and  who  most 
give  their  lives  and  thoughts  to  becoming  rich,  are  just  the  very 
people  whom  we  call  Philistines.  Culture  says:  "  Consider  these 
people,  then,  their  way  of  life,  their  habits,  their  manners,  the 
very  tones  of  their  voice;  look  at  them  attentively;  observe 
the  literature  they  read,  the  things  which  give  them  pleasure, 
the  words  which  come  forth  out  of  their  mouths,  the  thoughts 
which  make  the  furniture  of  their  minds ;  would  any  amount  of 
wealth  be  worth  having  with  the  condition  that  one  was  to  be- 
come just  like  these  people  by  having  it?"  And  thus  culture 
begets  a  dissatisfaction  which  is  of  the  highest  possible  value  in 
stemming  the  common  tide  of  men's  thoughts  in  a  wealthy  and 
industrial  community,  and  which  saves  the  future,  as  one  may 
hope,  from  being  vulgarized,  even  if  it  cannot  save  the  present. 

Population,  again,  and  bodily  health  and  vigor,  are  things 
which  are  nowhere  treated  in  such  an  unintelligent,  misleading, 
exaggerated  way  as  in  England.  Both  are  really  machinery ;  yet 
how  many  people  all  around  us  do  we  see  rest  in  them  and  fail 
to  look  beyond  them  !  Why,  one  has  heard  people,  fresh  from 
reading  certain  articles  of  the  Times  on  the  Registrar- General's 
returns  of  marriages  and  births  in  this  country,  who  would  talk 
of  our  large  English  families  in  quite  a  solemn  strain,  as  if  they 
had  something  in  itself  beautiful,  elevating,  and  meritorious  in 
them;  as  if  the  British  Philistine  would  have  only  to  present 
himself  before  the  Great  Judge  with  his  twelve  children,  in  order 
to  be  received  among  the  sheep  as  a  matter  of  right ! 

But  bodily  health  and  vigor,  it  may  be  said,  are  not  to  be 
classed  with  wealth  and  population  as  mere  machinery;  they 
have  a  more  real  and  essential  value.  True ;  but  only  as  they 
are  more  intimately  connected  with  a  perfect  spiritual  condition 
than  wealth  or  population  are.  The  moment  we  disjoin  them 
from  the  idea  of  a  perfect  spiritual  condition,  and  pursue  them, 
as  we  do  pursue  them,  for  their  own  sake  and  as  ends  in  them- 
selves, our  worship  of  them  becomes  as  mere  worship  of  machin- 

name  to  the  enemies  of  culture  :  those  whose  interests  were  limited  by 
narrow  and  material  aims.  —  Editors. 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT  li 

ery,  as  our  worship  of  wealth  or  population,  and  as  unintelligent 
and  vulgarizing  a  worship  as  that  is.  Every  one  with  anything 
like  an  adequate  idea  of  human  perfection  has  distinctly  marked 
this  subordination  to  higher  and  spiritual  ends  of  the  cultivation 
of  bodily  vigor  and  activity.  "  Bodily  exercise  profiteth  little ; 
but  godliness  is  profitable  unto  all  things,"  says  the  author  of  the 
Epistle  to  Timothy.  And  the  utilitarian  Franklin  says  just  as 
explicitly:  "Eat  and  drink  such  an  exact  quantity  as  suits  the 
constitution  of  thy  body,  in  reference  to  the  services  of  the  mind.''' 
But  the  point  of  view  of  culture,  keeping  the  mark  of  human  per- 
fection simply  and  broadly  in  view,  and  not  assigning  to  this  per- 
fection, as  religion  or  utilitarianism  assigns  to  it,  a  special  and 
limited  character,  this  point  of  view,  I  say,  of  culture  is  best 
given  by  these  words  of  Epictetus :  "It  is  a  sign  of  d<^via,"  says 
he,  —  that  is,  of  a  nature  not  finely  tempered,  —  "to  give  your- 
selves up  to  things  which  relate  to  the  body ;  to  make,  for  in- 
stance, a  great  fuss  about  exercise,  a  great  fuss  about  eating,  a 
great  fuss  about  drinking,  a  great  fuss  about  walking,  a  great 
fuss  about  riding.  All  these  things  ought  to  be  done  merely  by 
the  way :  the  formation  of  the  spirit  and  character  must  be  our 
real  concern."  This  is  admirable ;  and,  indeed,  the  Greek  word 
€i<f>v'ca,  a  finely  tempered  nature,  gives  exactly  the  notion  of 
perfection  as  culture  brings  us  to  conceive  it :  a  harmonious  per- 
fection, a  perfection  in  which  the  characters  of  beauty  and  in- 
telligence are  both  present,  which  unites  "the  two  noblest  of 
things,"  —  as  Swift,  who  of  one  of  the  two,  at  any  rate,  had  him- 
self all  too  little,  most  happily  calls  them  in  his  Battle  of  the  Books, 
—  "the  two  noblest  of  things,  sweetness  and  light.^'  The  evcfivrjq  is 
the  man  who  tends  towards  sweetness  and  light ;  the  d<^ijr;s,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  our  Philistine.  The  immense  spiritual  signifi- 
cance of  the  Greeks  is  due  to  their  having  been  inspired  with  this 
central  and  happy  idea  of  the  essential  character  of  human  per- 
fection ;  and  Mr.  Bright's  misconception  of  culture,  as  a  smatter- 
ing of  Greek  and  Latin,  comes  itself,  after  all,  from  this  wonderful 
significance  of  the  Greeks  having  affected  the  very  machinery  of 
our  education,  and  is  in  itself  a  kind  of  homage  to  it. 


12  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

In  thus  making  sweetness  and  light  to  be  characters  of  per- 
fection, culture  is  of  like  spirit  with  poetry,  follows  one  law  with 
poetry.  Far  more  than  on  our  freedom,  our  population,  and  our 
industrialism,  many  amongst  us  rely  upon  our  religious  organi- 
zations to  save  us.  I  have  called  religion  a  yet  more  important 
manifestation  of  human  nature  than  poetry,  because  it  has 
worked  on  a  broader  scale  for  perfection,  and  with  greater  masses 
of  men.  But  the  idea  of  beauty  and  of  a  human  nature  perfect 
on  all  its  sides,  which  is  the  dominant  idea  of  poetry,  is  a  true  and 
invaluable  idea,  though  it  has  not  yet  had  the  success  that  the 
idea  of  conquering  the  obvious  faults  of  our  animality,  and  of 
a  human  nature  perfect  on  the  moral  side,  —  which  is  the 
dominant  idea  of  religion,  —  has  been  enabled  to  have ;  and 
it  is  destined,  adding  to  itself  the  religious  idea  of  a  devout 
energy,  to  transform  and  govern  the  other. 

The  best  art  and  poetry  of  the  Greeks,  in  which  religion  and 
poetry  are  one,  in  which  the  idea  of  beauty  and  of  a  human 
nature  perfect  on  all  sides  adds  to  itself  a  religious  and  devout 
energy,  and  works  in  the  strength  of  that,  is  on  this  account  of 
such  surpassing  interest  and  instructiveness  for  us,  though  it  was, 
—  as,  having  regard  to  the  human  race  in  general,  and,  indeed, 
having  regard  to  the  Greeks  themselves,  we  must  own,  — a  pre- 
mature attempt,  an  attempt  which  for  success  needed  the  moral 
and  religious  fiber  in  humanity  to  be  more  braced  and  developed 
than  it  had  yet  been.  But  Greece  did  not  err  in  having  the  idea 
of  beauty,  harmony,  and  complete  human  perfection  so  present 
and  paramount.  It  is  impossible  to  have  this  idea  too  present 
and  paramount ;  only,  the  moral  fiber  must  be  braced  too.  And 
we,  because  we  have  braced  the  moral  fiber,  are  not  on  that 
account  in  the  right  way,  if  at  the  same  time  the  idea  of  beauty, 
harmony,  and  complete  human  perfection  is  wanting  or  misappre- 
hended amongst  us  ;  and  evidently  it  w  wanting  or  misapprehended 
at  present.  And  when  we  rely  as  we  do  on  our  rehgious  organiza- 
tions, which  in  themselves  do  not  and  cannot  give  us  this  idea,  and 
think  we  have  done  enough  if  we  make  them  spread  and  prevail, 
then  I  say  we  fall  into  our  common  fault  of  overvaluing  machinery. 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT 


13 


Nothing  is  more  common  than  for  people  to  confound  the 
inward  peace  and  satisfaction  which  follows  the  subduing  of  the 
obvious  faults  of  our  animality  with  what  I  may  call  absolute  in- 
ward pe?  ce  and  satisfaction,  —  the  peace  and  satisfaction  which 
are  reached  as  we  draw  near  to  complete  spiritual  perfec- 
tion, and  not  merely  to  moral  perfection,  or  rather  to  relative 
moral  perfection.  No  people  in  the  world  have  done  more  and 
struggled  more  to  attain  this  relative  moral  perfection  than  our 
English  race  has.  For  no  people  in  the  world  has  the  command 
to  resist  the  devil,  to  overcome  the  wicked  one,  in  the  nearest  and 
most  obvious  sense  of  those  words,  had  such  a  pressing  force  and 
reality.  And  we  have  had  our  reward,  not  only  in  the  great 
worldly  prosperity  which  our  obedience  to  this  command  has 
brought  us,  but  also,  and  far  more,  in  great  inward  peace  and 
satisfaction.  But  to  me  few  things  are  more  pathetic  than  to  see 
people,  on  the  strength  of  the  inward  peace  and  satisfaction 
which  their  rudimentary  efforts  towards  perfection  have  brought 
them,  employ,  concerning  their  incomplete  perfection  and  the 
religious  organizations  within  which  they  have  found  it,  language 
which  properly  applies  only  to  complete  perfection,  and  is  a  far- 
off  echo  of  the  human  soul's  prophecy  of  it.  Religion  itself,  I 
need  hardly  say,  supplies  them  in  abundance  with  this  grand  lan- 
guage. And  very  freely  do  they  use  it ;  yet  it  is  really  the  sever- 
est possible  criticism  of  such  an  incomplete  perfection  as  alone  we 
have  yet  reached  through  our  religious  organizations. 

The  impulse  of  the  English  race  towards  moral  development 
and  self-conquest  has  nowhere  so  powerfully  manifested  itself  as 
in  Puritanism.  Nowhere  has  Puritanism  found  so  adequate  an 
expression  as  in  the  religious  organization  of  the  Independents. 
The  modern  Independents  have  a  newspaper,  the  Nonconformist, 
written  with  great  sincerity  and  ability.  The  motto,  the  stand- 
ard, the  profession  of  faith,  which  this  organ  of  theirs  carries 
aloft,  is:  "The  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of 
the  Protestant  religion."  There  is  sweetness  and  light,  and  an 
ideal  of  complete  harmonious  human  perfection  !  One  need  not 
go  to  culture  and  poetry  to  find  language  to  judge  it.     Religion, 


14  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

with  its  instinct  for  perfection,  supplies  language  to  judge  it,  lan- 
guage, too,  which  is  in  our  mouths  every  day.  "Finally,  be  of 
one  mind,  united  in  feeling,"  says  St.  Peter.  There  is  an  ideal 
which  judges  the  Puritan  ideal :  "The  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and 
the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion!"  And  religious 
organizations  like  this  are  what  people  believe  in,  rest  in,  would 
give  their  lives  for  !  Such,  I  say,  is  the  wonderful  virtue  of  even 
the  beginnings  of  perfection,  of  having  conquered  even  the  plain 
faults  of  our  animality,  that  the  religious  organization  which  has 
helped  us  to  do  it  can  seem  to  us  something  precious,  salutary, 
and  to  be  propagated,  even  when  it  wears  such  a  brand  of  im- 
perfection on  its  forehead  as  this.  And  men  have  got  such  a 
habit  of  giving  to  the  language  of  religion  a  special  application, 
of  making  it  a  mere  jargon,  that  for  the  condemnation  which 
religion  itself  passes  on  the  shortcomings  of  their  religious  or- 
ganizations they  have  no  ear ;  they  are  sure  to  cheat  themselves 
and  to  explain  this  condemnation  away.  They  can  only  be 
reached  by  the  criticism  which  culture,  like  poetry,  speaking  a 
language  not  to  be  sophisticated,  and  resolutely  testing  these 
organizations  by  the  ideal  of  a  human  perfection  complete  on  all 
sides,  applies  to  them. 

But  men  of  culture  and  poetry,  it  will  be  said,  are  again  and 
again  failing,  and  failing  conspicuously,  in  the  necessary  first 
stage  to  a  harmonious  perfection,  in  the  subduing  of  the  great  ob- 
vious faults  of  our  animality,  which  it  is  the  glory  of  these  reli- 
gious organizations  to  have  helped  us  to  subdue.  True,  they  do 
often  so  fail.  They  have  often  been  without  the  virtues  as 
well  as  the  faults  of  the  Puritan ;  it  has  been  one  of  their  dangers 
that  they  so  felt  the  Puritan's  faults  that  they  too  much  neg- 
lected the  practice  of  his  virtues.  I  will  not,  however,  excul- 
pate them  at  the  Puritan's  expense.  They  have  often  failed  in 
morality,  and  morality  is  indispensable.  And  they  have  been 
punished  for  their  failure,  as  the  Puritan  has  been  rewarded  for 
his  performance.  They  have  been  punished  wherein  they  erred ; 
but  their  ideal  of  beauty,  of  sweetness  and  light,  and  a  human 
nature  complete  on  all  its  sides,  remains  the  true  ideal  of  per- 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT  15 

fection  still ;  just  as  the  Puritan's  ideal  of  perfection  remains 
narrow  and  inadequate,  although  for  what  he  did  well  he  has  been 
richly  rewarded.  Notwithstanding  the  mighty  results  of  the  Pil- 
grim Fathers'  voyage,  they  and  their  standard  of  perfection  are 
rightly  judged  when  we  figure  to  ourselves  Shakespeare  or  Virgil, 
—  souls  in  whom  sweetness  and  Ught,  and  all  that  in  human 
nature  is  most  humane,  were  eminent, — accompanying  them  on 
their  voyage,  and  think  what  intolerable  company  Shakespeare 
and  Virgil  would  have  found  them  !  In  the  same  way  let  us 
judge  the  religious  organizations  which  we  see  all  around  us. 
Do  not  let  us  deny  the  good  and  the  happiness  which  they  have 
accomplished ;  but  do  not  let  us  fail  to  see  clearly  that  their 
idea  of  human  perfection  is  narrow  and  inadequate,  and  that 
the  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protest- 
ant religion  will  never  bring  humanity  to  its  true  goal.  As  I 
said  with  regard  to  wealth :  Let  us  look  at  the  life  of  those 
who  live  in  and  for  it,  —  so  I  say  with  regard  to  the  religious 
organizations.  Look  at  the  life  imaged  in  such  a  newspaper  as 
the  Nonconformist,  —  a  life  of  jealousy  of  the  Establishment, 
disputes,  tea-meetings,  openings  of  chapels,  sermons ;  and  then 
think  of  it  as  an  ideal  of  a  human  life  completing  itself  on  all 
sides,  and  aspiring  with  all  its  organs  after  sweetness,  light,  and 
perfection  ! 

Another  newspaper,  representing,  like  the  Nonconformist,  one 
of  the  religious  organizations  of  this  country,  was  a  short  time  ago 
giving  aii  account  of  the  crowd  at  Epsom  on  the  Derby  day,  and  of 
all  the  vice  and  hideousness  which  was  to  be  seen  in  that  crowd ; 
and  then  the  writer  turned  suddenly  round  upon  Professor  Hux- 
ley, and  asked  him  how  he  proposed  to  cure  all  this  vice  and 
hideousness  without  religion.  I  confess  I  felt  disposed  to  ask  the 
asker  this  question :  and  how  do  you  propose  to  cure  it  with  such 
a  religion  as  yours  ?  How  is  the  ideal  of  a  life  so  unlovely,  so 
unattractive,  so  incomplete,  so  narrow,  so  far  removed  from  a 
true  and  satisfying  ideal  of  human  perfection,  as  is  the  life  of  your 
religious  organization  as  you  yourself  image  it,  to  conquer  and 
transform  all  this  vice  and  hideousness  ?     Indeed,  the  strongest 


1 6  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

plea  for  the  study  of  perfection  as  pursued  by  culture,  the  clearest 
proof  of  the  actual  inadequacy  of  the  idea  of  perfection  held  by 
the  religious  organizations,  —  expressing,  as  I  have  said,  the  most 
\\idespread  effort  which  the  human  race  has  yet  made  after  per- 
fection,— is  to  be  found  in  the  state  of  our  life  and  society  with 
these  in  possession  of  it,  and  ha\dng  been  in  possession  of  it  I 
know  not  how  many  hundred  years.  We  are  all  of  us  included  in 
some  religious  organization  or  other ;  we  all  call  ourselves,  in  the 
sublime  and  aspiring  language  of  religion  which  I  have  before 
noticed,  children  of  God.  Children  of  God ; — it  is  an  immense  pre- 
tension !  —  and  how  are  we  to  justify  it  ?  By  the  works  which 
we  do,  and  the  words  which  we  speak.  And  the  work  which  we 
collective  children  of  God  do,  our  grand  center  of  life,  our  city 
which  we  have  builded  for  us  to  dwell  in,  is  London  !  London, 
with  its  unutterable  external  hideousness,  and  with  its  internal 
canker  of  publice  egestas,  privatim  opulentia,^  —  to  use  the  words 
which  Sallust  puts  into  Cato's  mouth  about  Rome,  —  unequalled 
in  the  world  !  The  word,  again,  which  we  children  of  God  speak, 
the  voice  which  most  hits  our  collective  thought,  the  newspaper 
with  the  largest  circulation  in  England,  nay,  with  the  largest  cir- 
culation in  the  whole  world,  is  the  Daily  Telegraph !  I  say  that 
when  our  religious  organizations,  —  which  I  admit  to  express 
the  most  considerable  effort  after  perfection  that  our  race  has  yet 
made,  —  land  us  in  no  better  result  than  this,  it  is  high  time  to 
examine  carefully  their  idea  of  perfection,  to  see  whether  it  does 
not  leave  out  of  account  sides  and  forces  of  human  nature  which 
we  might  turn  to  great  use ;  whether  it  would  not  be  more  opera- 
tive if  it  were  more  complete.  And  I  say  that  the  English  reli- 
ance on  our  religious  organizations  and  on  their  ideas  of  human 
perfection  just  as  they  stand,  is  like  our  reliance  on  freedom,  on 
muscular  Christianity,  on  population,  on  coal,  on  wealth, — mere 
belief  in  machinery,  and  unfruitful ;  and  that  it  is  wholesomely 
counteracted  by  culture,  bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and. 
on  drawing  the  human  race  onwards  to  a  more  complete,  a  har- 
monious perfection. 

1  Public  want  and  private  wealth.  — Editors. 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT  17 

Culture,  however,  shows  its  single-minded  love  of  perfection, 
its  desire  simply  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail,  its 
freedom  from  fanaticism,  by  its  attitude  towards  all  this  machin- 
ery, even  while  it  insists  that  it  is  machinery.  Fanatics,  seeing 
the  mischief  men  do  themselves  by  their  blind  belief  in  some 
machinery  or  other,  —  whether  it  is  wealth  and  industrialism,  or 
whether  it  is  the  cultivation  of  bodily  strength  and  activity,  or 
whether  it  is  a  political  organization,  —  or  whether  it  is  a  reli- 
gious organization,  —  oppose  with  might  and  main  the  tendency 
to  this  or  that  political  and  religious  organization,  or  to  games 
and  athletic  exercises,  or  to  wealth  and  industrialism,  and  try 
violently  to  stop  it.  But  the  flexibility  which  sweetness  and 
light  give,  and  which  is  one  of  the  rewards  of  culture  pursued  in 
good  faith,  enables  a  man  to  see  that  a  tendency  may  be  neces- 
sary, and  even,  as  a  preparation  for  something  in  the  future,  salu- 
tary, and  yet  that  the  generations  or  individuals  who  obey  this 
tendency  are  sacrificed  to  it,  that  they  fall  short  of  the  hope  of 
perfection  by  following  it ;  and  that  its  mischiefs  are  to  be  criti- 
cized, lest  it  should  take  too  firm  a  hold  and  last  after  it  has 
served  its  purpose. 

Mr.  Gladstone  well  pointed  out,  in  a  speech  at  Paris,  —  and 
others  have  pointed  out  the  same  thing,  —  how  necessary  is  the 
present  great  movement  towards  wealth  and  industrialism,  in 
order  to  lay  broad  foundations  of  material  well-being  for  the 
society  of  the  future.  The  worst  of  these  justifications  is  that 
they  are  generally  addressed  to  the  very  people  engaged,  body 
and  soul,  in  the  movement  in  question ;  at  all  events,  that  they 
are  always  seized  with  the  greatest  avidity  by  these  people,  and 
taken  by  them  as  quite  justifying  their  life ;  and  that  thus  they 
tend  to  harden  them  in  their  sins.  Now,  culture  admits  the  ne- 
cessity of  the  movement  towards  fortune-making  and  exaggerated 
industrialism,  readily  allows  that  the  future  may  derive  benefit 
from  it ;  but  insists,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  passing  genera- 
tions of  industrialists,  —  forming,  for  the  most  part,  the  stout 
main  body  of  Philistinism,  —  are  sacrificed  to  it.  In  the  same 
way,  the  result  of  all  the  games  and  sports  which  occupy  the  pass- 


1 8  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

ing  generation  of  boys  and  young  men  may  be  the  establishment 
of  a  better  and  sounder  physical  type  for  the  future  to  work  with. 
Culture  does  not  set  itself  against  the  games  and  sports ;  it  con- 
gratulates the  future,  and  hopes  it  will  make  a  good  use  of  its 
improved  physical  basis ;  but  it  points  out  that  our  passing 
generation  of  boys  and  young  men  is,  meantime,  sacrificed. 
Puritanism  was  perhaps  necessary  to  develop  the  moral  fiber  of 
the  English  race,  Nonconformity  to  break  the  yoke  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal domination  over  men's  minds  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  free- 
dom of  thought  in  the  distant  future ;  still,  culture  points  out 
that  the  harmonious  perfection  of  generations  of  Puritans  and 
Nonconformists  has  been,  in  consequence,  sacrificed.  Freedom 
of  speech  may  be  necessary  for  the  society  of  the  future,  but  the 
young  lions  of  the  Daily  Telegraph  in  the  meanwhile  are  sacrificed. 
A  voice  for  every  man  in  his  country's  government  may  be  nec- 
essary for  the  society  of  the  future,  but  meanwhile  Mr.  Beales 
and  Mr.  Bradlaugh  are  sacrificed. 

Oxford,  the  Oxford  of  the  past,  has  many  faults ;  and  she  has 
heavily  paid  for  them  in  defeat,  in  isolation,  in  want  of  hold  upon 
the  modern  world.  Yet  we  in  Oxford,  brought  up  amidst  the 
beauty  and  sweetness  of  that  beautiful  place,  have  not  failed  to 
seize  one  truth,  —  the  truth  that  beauty  and  sweetness  are 
essential  characters  of  a  complete  human  perfection.  When  I 
insist  on  this,  I  am  all  in  the  faith  and  tradition  of  Oxford.  I  say 
boldly  that  this,  our  sentiment  for  beauty  and  sweetness,  our 
sentiment  against  hideousness  and  rawness,  has  been  at  the  bot- 
tom of  our  attachment  to  so  many  beaten  causes,  of  our  op- 
position to  so  many  triumphant  movements.  And  the  senti- 
ment is  true,  and  has  never  been  wholly  defeated,  and  has  shown 
its  power  even  in  its  defeat.  We  have  not  won  our  political 
battles,  we  have  not  carried  our  main  points,  we  have  not  stopped 
our  adversaries'  advance,  we  have  not  marched  victoriously  with 
the  modern  world ;  but  we  have  told  silently  upon  the  mind  of 
the  country,  we  have  prepared  currents  of  feeling  which  sap  our 
adversaries'  position  when  it  seems  gained,  we  have  kept  up  our 
own  communications  with  the  future.     Look  at  the  course  of  the 


SWEETNESS  AND   LIGHT 


19 


great  movement  ^  which  shook  Oxford  to  its  center  some  thirty 
years  ago  !  It  was  directed,  as  any  one  who  reads  Dr.  New- 
man's Apology  ^  may  see,  against  what  in  one  word  may  be  called 
"Liberalism."  Liberalism  prevailed;  it  was  the  appointed 
force  to  do  the  work  of  the  hour ;  it  was  necessary,  it  was  inevi- 
table, that  it  should  prevail.  The  Oxford  movement  was  broken 5 
it  failed ;  our  wrecks  are  scattered  on  every  shore :  — 

Quae  regio  in  terris  nostri  non  plena  laboris  ? 

But  what  was  it,  this  liberalism,  as  Dr.  Newman  saw  it,  and  as  it 
really  broke  the  Oxford  movement?  It  was  the  great  middle- 
class  liberalism,  which  had  for  the  cardinal  points  of  its  belief 
the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  local  self-government,  in  politics  ;  in 
the  social  sphere,  free  trade,  unrestricted  competition,  and  the 
making  of  large  industrial  fortunes ;  in  the  religious  sphere,  the 
Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant 
religion.  I  do  not  say  that  other  and  more  intelligent  forces  than 
this  were  not  opposed  to  the  Oxford  movement :  but  this  was  the 
force  which  really  beat  it ;  this  was  the  force  which  Dr.  Newman 
felt  himself  fighting  with ;  this  was  the  force  which  till  only  the 
other  day  seemed  to  be  the  paramount  force  in  this  country,  and 
to  be  in  possession  of  the  future ;  this  was  the  force  whose  achieve- 
ments fill  Mr.  Lowe  with  such  inexpressible  admiration,  and 
whose  rule  he  was  so  horror-struck  to  see  threatened.  And  where 
is  this  great  force  of  Philistinism  now?  It  is  thrust  into  the 
second  rank,  it  is  become  a  power  of  yesterday,  it  has  lost  the 
future.  A  new  power  has  suddenly  appeared,  a  power  which  it 
is  impossible  yet  to  judge  fully,  but  which  is  certainly  a  wholly 
different  force  from  middle-class  liberalism ;  different  in  its  cardi- 
nal points  of  belief,  different  in  its  tendencies  in  every  sphere.     It 

*  The  Oxford  or  Tractarian  Movement,  which  began  at  Oxford  in  1833 
under  the  leadership  of  John  Henry  (afterwards  Cardinal)  Newman,  and 
John  Keble,  had  as  its  object  the  intensifying  of  religious  faith  and  the 
revival  of  ecclesiastical  and  ceremonial  tradition  in  the  Church  of 
England.  —  Editors. 

^  Newman's  Apologia  pro  Vita  Sua,  an  explanation  of  his  conversion  to 
the  Roman  Church.  —  Editors. 


20  MATTHEW   ARNOLD 

loves  and  admires  neither  the  legislation  of  middle-class  Parlia- 
ments, nor  the  local  self-government  of  middle-class  vestries,  nor 
the  unrestricted  competition  of  middle-class  industrialists,  nor 
the  Dissidence  of  middle-class  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism 
of  middle-class  Protestant  religion.  I  am  not  now  praising  this 
new  force,  or  saying  that  its  own  ideals  are  better ;  all  I  say  is, 
that  they  are  wholly  different.  And  who  will  estimate  how  much 
the  currents  of  feeling  created  by  Dr.  Newman's  movements,  the 
keen  desire  for  beauty  and  sweetness  which  it  nourished,  the  deep 
aversion  it  manifested  to  the  hardness  and  vulgarity  of  middle- 
class  liberalism,  the  strong  light  it  turned  on  the  hideous  and 
grotesque  illusions  of  middle-class  Protestantism,  —  who  will 
estimate  how  much  all  these  contributed  to  swell  the  tide  of 
secret  dissatisfaction  which  has  mined  the  ground  under  the  self- 
confident  liberalism  of  the  last  thirty  years,  and  has  prepared 
the  way  for  its  sudden  collapse  and  supersession  ?  It  is  in  this 
manner  that  the  sentiment  of  Oxford  for  beauty  and  sweetness 
conquers,  and  in  this  manner  long  may  it  continue  to  conquer  ! 
In  this  manner  it  works  to  the  same  end  as  culture,  and  there 
is  plenty  of  work  for  it  yet  to  do.  I  have  said  that  the  new  and 
more  democratic  force  which  is  now  superseding  our  old  middle- 
class  liberalism  cannot  yet  be  rightly  judged.  It  has  its  main 
tendencies  still  to  form.  We  hear  promises  of  its  giving  us  admin- 
istrative reform,  law  reform,  reform  of  education,  and  I  know  not 
what ;  but  those  promises  come  rather  from  its  advocates,  wish- 
ing to  make  a  good  plea  for  it  and  to  justify  it  for  superseding 
middle-class  liberalism,  than  from  clear  tendencies  which  it  has 
itself  yet  developed.  But  meanwhile  it  has  plenty  of  well-in- 
tentioned friends  against  whom  culture  may  with  advantage  con- 
tinue to  uphold  steadily  its  ideal  of  human  perfection ;  that  this 
is  an  inward  spiritual  activity,  having  for  its  characters  increased 
sweetness,  increased  light,  increased  life,  increased  sympathy.  Mr. 
Bright,  who  has  a  foot  in  both  worlds,  the  world  of  middle-class 
liberalism  and  the  world  of  democracy,  but  who  brings  most  of 
his  ideas  from  the  world  of  middle-class  liberalism  in  which  he 
was  bred,  always  inclines  to  inculcate  that  faith  in  machinery  to 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  21 

which,  as  we  have  seen,  Englishmen  are  so  prone,  and  which  has 
been  the  bane  of  middle-class  liberaUsm.  He  complains  with 
a  sorrowful  indignation  of  people  who  "  appear  to  have  no  proper 
estimate  of  the  value  of  the  franchise"  ;  he  leads  his  disciples  to 
beheve,  —  what  the  EngHshman  is  always  too  ready  to  believe, — 
that  the  having  a  vote,  like  the  having  a  large  family,  or  a  large 
business,  or  large  muscles,  has  in  itself  some  edifying  and  perfect- 
ing effect  upon  human  nature.  Or  else  he  cries  out  to  the  democ- 
racy,—  "the  men,"  as  he  calls  them,  "upon  whose  shoulders 
the  greatness  of  England  rests,"  —he  cries  out  to  them:  "See 
what  you  have  done  !  I  look  over  this  country  and  see  the  cities 
you  have  built,  the  railroads  you  have  made,  the  manufactures 
you  have  produced,  the  cargoes  which  freight  the  ships  of  the 
greatest  mercantile  navy  the  world  has  ever  seen  !  I  see  that 
you  have  converted  by  your  labors  what  was  once  a  wilderness, 
these  islands,  into  a  fruitful  garden ;  I  know  that  you  have  cre- 
ated this  wealth,  and  are  a  nation  whose  name  is  a  word  of 
power  throughout  all  the  world."  Why,  this  is  just  the  very 
style  of  laudation  with  which  Mr.  Roebuck  or  Mr.  Lowe  de- 
bauches the  minds  of  the  middle  classes,  and  makes  such  Philis- 
tines of  them.  It  is  the  same  fashion  of  teaching  a  man  to  value 
himself  not  on  what  he  is,  not  on  his  progress  in  sweetness  and 
light,  but  on  the  number  of  the  railroads  he  has  constructed,  or 
the  bigness  of  the  tabernacle  he  has  built.  Only  the  middle 
classes  are  told  they  have  done  it  all  with  their  energy,  self-reli- 
ance, and  capital,  and  the  democracy  are  told  they  have  done  it 
all  with  their  hands  and  sinews.  But  teaching  the  democracy  to 
put  its  trust  in  achievements  of  this  kind  is  merely  training  them 
to  be  PhiUstines  to  take  the  place  of  the  Philistines  whom  they 
are  superseding ;  and  they  too,  like  the  middle  class,  will  be 
encouraged  to  sit  down  at  the  banquet  of  the  future  without  hav- 
ing on  a  wedding  garment,  and  nothing  excellent  can  then  come 
from  them.  Those  who  know  their  besetting  faults,  those  who 
have  watched  them  and  listened  to  them,  or  those  who  will  read 
the  instructive  account  recently  given  of  them  by  one  of  them- 
selves, the  Journeypian  Engineer,  will  agree  that  the  idea  which 


22  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

culture  sets  before  us  of  perfection,  —  an  increased  spiritual  activ- 
ity, having  for  its  characters  increased  sweetness,  increased  light, 
increased  life,  increased  sympathy,  —  is  an  idea  which  the  new 
democracy  needs  far  more  than  the  idea  of  the  blessedness  of  the 
franchise  or  the  wonderfulness  of  its  own  industrial  performances. 
Other  well-meaning  friends  of  this  new  power  are  for  leading  it, 
not  in  the  old  ruts  of  middle-class  Philistinism,  but  in  ways 
which  are  naturally  alluring  to  the  feet  of  democracy,  though  in 
this  country  they  are  novel  and  untried  ways.  I  may  call  them 
the  ways  of  Jacobinism.^  Violent  indignation  with  the  past,  ab- 
stract systems  of  renovation  applied  wholesale,  a  new  doctrine 
drawn  up  in  black  and  white  for  elaborating  down  to  the  very 
smallest  details  a  rational  society  for  the  future,  —  these  are  the 
ways  of  Jacobinism.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  and  other  disciples 
of  Comte,^  —  one  of  them,  Mr.  Congreve,  is  an  old  acquaintance  of 
mine  and  I  am  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  of  publicly  expressing 
my  respect  for  his  talents  and  character,  —  are  among  the  friends 
of  democracy  who  are  for  leading  it  in  paths  of  this  kind.  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  is  very  hostile  to  culture,  and  from  a  natural 
enough  motive;  for  culture  is  the  eternal  opponent  of  the  two 
things  which  are  the  signal  marks  of  Jacobinism,  —  its  fierceness, 
and  its  addiction  to  an  abstract  system.  Culture  is  always  as- 
signing to  system-makers  and  systems  a  smaller  share  in  the  bent 
of  human  destiny  than  their  friends  like.  A  current  in  people's 
minds  sets  towards  new  ideas ;  people  are  dissatisfied  with  their 
old  narrow  stock  of  Philistine  ideas,  Anglo-Saxon  ideas,  or  any 
other;  and  some  man,  some  Bentham  or  Comte,  who  has  the 
real  merit  of  having  early  and  strongly  felt  and  helped  the  new 
current,  but  who  brings  plenty  of  narrowness  and  mistakes  of  his 
own  into  his  feeling  and  help  of  it,  is  credited  with  being  the 
author  of  the  whole  current,  the  fit  person  to  be  intrusted  with 
its  regulation  and  to  guide  the  human  race. 

1  Violent  radicalism.  The  Jacobin  party  played  an  aggressive  part  in 
the  French  Revolution.  —Editors. 

^  Auguste  Comte,  the  founder  of  the  "  Positivist "  philosophy,  who  paid 
an  exalted  deference  to  the  importance  of  public  opinion.  —  Editors. 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT 


23 


The  excellent  German  historian  of  the  mythology  of  Rome, 
Preller,  relating  the  introduction  at  Rome  under  the  Tarquins  of 
the  worship  of  Apollo,  the  god  of  light,  healing,  and  reconcilia- 
tion, will  have  us  observe  that  it  was  not  so  much  the  Tarquins 
who  brought  to  Rome  the  new  worship  of  Apollo,  as  a  current 
in  the  mind  of  the  Roman  people  which  set  powerfully  at  that 
time  towards  a  new  worship  of  this  kind,  and  away  from  the  old 
run  of  Latin  and  Sabine  religious  ideas.  In  a  similar  way,  cul- 
ture directs  our  attention  to  the  natural  current  there  is  in  human 
affairs,  and  to  its  continual  working,  and  will  not  let  us  rivet  our 
faith  upon  any  one  man  and  his  doings.  It  makes  us  see  not 
only  his  good  side,  but  also  how  much  in  him  was  of  necessity 
limited  and  transient ;  nay,  it  even  feels  a  pleasure,  a  sense  of  an 
increased  freedom  and  of  an  ampler  future,  in  so  doing. 

I  remember,  when  I  was  under  the  influence  of  a  mind  to 
which  I  feel  the  greatest  obligations,  the  mind  of  a  man  who  was 
the  very  incarnation  of  sanity  and  clear  sense,  a  man  the  most 
considerable,  it  seems  to  me,  whom  America  has  yet  produced,  — 
Benjamin  Franklin,  —  I  remember  the  relief  with  which,  after 
long  feeling  the  sway  of  Franklin's  imperturbable  common-sense, 
I  came  upon  a  project  of  his  for  a  new  version  of  the  Book  of  Job 
to  replace  the  old  version,  the  style  of  which,  says  Franklin,  has 
become  obsolete,  and  thence  less  agreeable.  "I  give,"  he  con- 
tinues, "a.  few  verses,  which  may  serve  as  a  sample  of  the  kind  of 
version  I  would  recommend."  We  all  recollect  the  famous  verse 
in  our  translation  :  "Then  Satan  answered  the  Lord  and  said: 
'Doth  Job  fear  God  for  nought?'"  Franklin  makes  this: 
"  Does  your  Majesty  imagine  that  Job's  good  conduct  is  the 
effect  of  mere  personal  attachment  and  affection?"  I  well 
remember  how,  when  first  I  read  that,  I  drew  a  deep  breath  of 
relief,  and  said  to  myself:  "After  all,  there  is  a  stretch  of 
humanity  beyond  Franklin's  victorious  good  sense  !"  So,  after 
hearing  Bentham  cried  loudly  up  as  the  renovator  of  modern 
society,  and  Bentham's  mind  and  ideas  proposed  as  the  rulers 
of  our  future,  I  open  the  Deontology.  There  I  read:  "While 
Xenophon  was  writing  his  history  and   Euclid  teaching  geom- 


24  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

etry,  Socrates  and  Plato  were  talking  nonsense  under  pretense 
of  talking  wisdom  and  morality.  This  morality  of  theirs  con- 
sisted in  words ;  this  wisdom  of  theirs  was  the  denial  of  matters 
known  to  every  man's  experience."  From  the  moment  of 
reading  that,  I  am  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  Bentham  !  the 
fanaticism  of  his  adherents  can  touch  me  no  longer.  I  feel  the 
inadequacy  of  his  mind  and  ideas  for  supplying  the  rule  of  human 
society,  for  perfection. 

Culture  tends  always  thus  to  deal  with  the  men  of  a  system,  of 
disciples,  of  a  school ;  with  men  like  Comte,  or  the  late  Mr. 
Buckle,  or  Mr.  Mill.^  However  much  it  may  find  to  admire  in 
these  personages,  or  in  some  of  them,  it  nevertheless  remembers 
the  text :  "Be  not  ye  called  Rabbi ! "  and  it  soon  passes  on  from 
any  Rabbi.  But  Jacobinism  loves  a  Rabbi;  it  does  not  want 
to  pass  on  from  its  Rabbi  in  pursuit  of  a  future  and  still  unreached 
perfection  ;  it  wants  its  Rabbi  and  its  ideas  to  stand  for  perfec- 
tion, that  they  may  with  the  more  authority  recast  the  world ; 
and  for  Jacobinism,  therefore,  culture,  —  eternally  passing  on- 
wards and  seeking,  —  is  an  impertinence  and  an  offense.  But 
culture,  just  because  it  resists  this  tendency  of  Jacobinism  to  im- 
pose on  us  a  man  with  limitations  and  errors  of  his  own  along 
with  the  true  ideas  of  which  he  is  the  organ,  really  does  the 
world  and  Jacobinism  itself  a  service. 

So,  too.  Jacobinism,  in  its  fierce  hatred  of  the  past  and  of  those 
whom  it  makes  liable  for  the  sins  of  the  past,  cannot  away  with 
the  inexhaustible  indulgence  proper  to  culture,  the  consideration 
of  circumstances,  the  severe  judgment  of  actions  joined  to  the 
merciful  judgment  of  persons.  "The  man  of  culture  is  in  poli- 
tics," cries  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  "one  of  the  poorest  mortals 
alive  !"  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  wants  to  be  doing  business,  and 
he  complains  that  the  man  of  culture  stops  him  with  a  "turn  for 
small  fault-finding,  love  of  selfish  ease,  and  indecision  in  action." 
Of  what  use  is  culture,  he  asks,  except  for  "  a  critic  of  new  books 
or  a  professor  of  belles-lettres?'"  Why,  it  is  of  use  because,  in 
presence  of  the  fierce  exasperation  which  breathes,  or  rather,  I 

*  See  p.  98.  —  Editors. 


SWEETNESS  AND    LIGHT  25 

may  say,  hisses  through  the  whole  production  in  which  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison  asks  that  question,  it  reminds  us  that  the 
perfection  of  human  nature  is  sweetness  and  Hght.  It  is  of  use 
because,  Hke  rehgion,  —  that  other  effort  after  perfection,  —  it 
testifies  that,  where  bitter  envying  and  strife  are,  there  is  con- 
fusion and  every  evil  work. 

The  pursuit  of  perfection,  then,  is  the  pursuit  of  sweetness  and 
light.  He  who  works  for  sweetness  and  light,  works  to  make 
reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail.  He  who  works  for  machin- 
ery, he  who  works  for  hatred,  works  only  for  confusion.  Culture 
looks  beyond  machinery ,  culture  hates  hatred ;  culture  has  one 
great  passion,  the  passion  for  sweetness  and  light.  It  has  one 
even  yet  greater  ! — the  passion  for  making  them  prevail.  It  is 
not  satisfied  till  we  all  come  to  a  perfect  man  ;  it  knows  that  the 
sweetness  and  light  of  the  few  must  be  imperfect  until  the  raw 
and  unkindled  masses  of  humanity  are  touched  with  sweetness 
and  light.  If  I  have  not  shrunk  from  saying  that  we  must  work 
for  sweetness  and  light,  so  neither  have  I  shrunk  from  saying 
that  we  must  have  a  broad  basis,  must  have  sweetness  and 
light  for  as  many  as  possible.  Again  and  again  I  have  insisted 
how  those  are  the  happy  moments  of  humanity,  how  those  are 
the  marking  epochs  of  a  people's  life,  how  those  are  the  flower- 
ing times  for  literature  and  art  and  all  the  creative  power  of 
genius,  when  there  is  a  national  glow  of  life  and  thought,  when 
the  whole  of  society  is  in  the  fullest  measure  permeated  by 
thought,  sensible  to  beauty,  intelligent  and  alive.  Only  it  must 
be  real  thought  and  real  beauty ;  real  sweetness  and  real  light. 
Plenty  of  people  will  try  to  give  the  masses,  as  they  call  them, 
an  intellectual  food  prepared  and  adapted  in  the  way  they  think 
proper  for  the  actual  condition  of  the  masses.  The  ordinary 
popular  literature  is  an  example  of  this  way  of  working  on  the 
masses.  Plenty  of  people  will  try  to  indoctrinate  the  masses 
with  the  set  of  ideas  and  judgments  constituting  the  creed  of  their 
own  profession  or  party.  Our  religious  and  political  organiza- 
tions give  an  example  of  this  way  of  working  on  the  masses.  I 
condemn  neither  way ;   but  culture  works  differently.     It  does 


26  MATTHEW  ARNOLD 

not  try  to  teach  down  to  the  level  of  inferior  classes ;  it  does  not 
try  to  win  them  for  this  or  that  sect  of  its  own,  with  ready-made 
judgments  and  watchwords.  It  seeks  to  do  away  with  classes ; 
to  make  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and  known  in  the  world 
current  everywhere ;  to  make  all  men  live  in  an  atmosphere  of 
sweetness  and  light,  where  they  may  use  ideas,  as  it  uses  them 
itself,  freely,  —  nourished,  and  not  bound  by  them. 

This  is  the  social  idea;  and  the  men  of  culture  are  the  true 
apostles  of  equality.  The  great  men  of  culture  are  those  who 
have  had  a  passion  for  diffusing,  for  making  prevail,  for  carrying 
from  one  end  of  society  to  the  other,  the  best  knowledge,  the 
best  ideas  of  their  time ;  who  have  labored  to  divest  knowledge 
of  all  that  was  harsh,  uncouth,  difficult,  abstract,  professional, 
exclusive ;  to  humanize  it,  to  make  it  efficient  outside  the  clique 
of  the  cultivated  and  learned,  yet  still  remaining  the  best  knowl- 
edge and  thought  of  the  time,  and  a  true  source,  therefore,  of 
sweetness  and  light.  Such  a  man  was  Abelard  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  in  spite  of  all  his  imperfections ;  and  thence  the  bound- 
less emotion  and  enthusiasm  which  Abelard  excited.  Such  were 
Lessing  and  Herder  in  Germany,  at  the  end  of  the  last  century ; 
and  their  services  to  Germany  were  in  this  way  inestimably 
precious.  Generations  will  pass,  and  literary  monuments  will 
accumulate,  and  works  far  more  perfect  than  the  works  of 
Lessing  and  Herder  will  be  produced  in  Germany ;  and  yet  the 
names  of  these  two  men  will  fill  a  German  with  a  reverence  and 
enthusiasm  such  as  the  names  of  the  most  gifted  masters  will 
hardly  awaken.  And  why?  Because  they  humanized  knowl- 
edge ;  because  they  broadened  the  basis  of  life  and  intelligence ; 
because  they  worked  powerfully  to  diffuse  sweetness  and  light, 
to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail.  With  Saint  Au- 
gustine they  said :  "Let  us  not  leave  thee  alone  to  make  in  the 
secret  of  thy  knowledge,  as  thou  didst  before  the  creation  of  the 
firmament,  the  division  of  light  from  darkness ;  let  the  children 
of  thy  spirit,  placed  in  their  firmament,  make  their  light  shine 
upon  the  earth,  mark  the  division  of  night  and  day,  and  an- 
nounce the  revolution  of  the  times ;  for  the  old  order  is  passed, 


SWEETNESS   AND   LIGHT  27 

and  the  new  arises ;  the  night  is  spent,  the  day  is  come  forth ; 
and  thou  shalt  crown  the  year  with  thy  blessing,  when  thou  shalt 
send  forth  laborers  into  thy  harvest  sown  by  other  hands  than 
theirs ;  when  thou  shalt  send  forth  new  laborers  to  new  seed- 
times, whereof  the  harvest  shall  be  not  yet." 


11 

SCIENCE   AND   CULTURE 

Thomas  Henry  Huxley 

[Thomas  Henry  Huxley  (1825-1895)  is  to  be  remembered  among  the 
great  men  of  the  Victorian  era  who  contributed  most  to  human  progress 
and  knowledge.  As  a  professional  scientist  he  made  invaluable  contribu- 
tions to  research ;  as  a  champion  of  Darwinism  he  greatly  strengthened  the 
foundations  of  the  evolutionary  theory;  as  an  educator  he  completely 
revolutionized  existing  methods  of  scientific  teaching;  and  as  a  public  lec- 
turer he  did  much  to  popularize  the  facts  of  modern  science.  Most  of  his 
writing  centers  in  his  two  chief  interests,  scientific  exposition  and  the  prob- 
lem of  education,  and  is  characterized  by  a  directness  of  thought  and  a  lucid- 
ity of  style  perhaps  unsurpassed  in  the  whole  range  of  English  prose.  A 
typical  Darwinian  essay  appears  elsewhere  in  this  volume. 

The  following  lecture  on  Science  and  CiiUiire  has  been  selected  as 
expressly  directed  against  the  well-known  educational  views  of  Matthew 
Arnold.  Huxley's  arguments  for  the  cultural  and  educational  value  of 
science  as  opposed  to  that  of  the  humanities,  it  may  be  noticed,  are 
reiterated  by  present-day  champions  of  science  in  discussions  over  this 
still  vexing  and  far  from  settled  question.  A  classical  education,  it  is 
maintained,  while  an  excellent  thing  for  some,  is  a  waste  of  time  for  the 
practical  minded;  and,  moreover,  real  culture  may  be  acquired  Just  as 
effectively  by  an  exclusively  scientific  education  as  by  an  equally>  restricted 
literary  education.  For  the  continuation  of  this  debate  between  Huxley 
and  Arnold,  the  student  is  referred  to  Arnold's  Literature  and  Science  (Dis- 
courses in  America,  1885). 

Science  and  Culture  was  delivered  as  an  address  at  the  opening  of  Sir 
Josiah  Mason's  Science  College,  at  Birmingham,  October  i,  1880.] 

Six  years  ago,  as  some  of  my  present  hearers  may  remember, 
I  had  the  privilege  of  addressing  a  large  assemblage  of  the  in- 
habitants of  this  city,  who  had  gathered  together  to  do  honor 
to  the  memory  of  their  famous  townsman,  Joseph  Priestley; 
and,  if  any  satisfaction  attaches  to  posthumous  glory,  we  may 

28 


SCIENCE  AND   CULTURE  29 

hope  that  the  manes  of  the  burnt-out  philosopher  were  then 
hnally  appeased. 

No  man,  however,  who  is  endowed  with  a  fair  share  of  com- 
mon sense,  and  not  more  than  a  fair  share  of  vanity,  will  identify 
either  contemporary  or  posthumous  fame  with  the  highest 
good ;  and  Priestley's  life  leaves  no  doubt  that  he,  at  any  rate, 
set  a  much  higher  value  upon  the  advancement  of  knowledge, 
and  the  promotion  of  that  freedom  of  thought  which  is  at  once 
the  cause  and  the  consequence  of  intellectual  progress. 

Hence  I  am  disposed  to  think  that,  if  Priestley  could  be 
amongst  us  to-day,  the  occasion  of  our  meeting  would  afford 
him  even  greater  pleasure  than  the  proceedings  which  cele- 
brated the  centenary  of  his  chief  discovery.  The  kindly  heart 
would  be  moved,  the  high  sense  of  social  duty  would  be  satisfied, 
by  the  spectacle  of  well-earned  wealth,  neither  squandered  in 
tawdry  luxury  and  vainglorious  show,  nor  scattered  with  the 
careless  charity  which  blesses  neither  him  that  gives  nor  him 
that  takes,  but  expended  in  the  execution  of  a  well-considered 
plan  for  the  aid  of  present  and  future  generations  of  those  who 
are  willing  to  help  themselves. 

We  shall  all  be  of  one  mind  thus  far.  But  it  is  needful  to  share 
Priestley's  keen  interest  in  physical  science ;  and  to  have  learned, 
as  he  had  learned,  the  value  of  scientific  training  in  fields  of 
inquiry  apparently  far  remote  from  physical  science ;  in  order 
to  appreciate,  as  he  would  have  appreciated,  the  value  of  the 
noble  gift  which  Sir  Josiah  Mason  has  bestowed  upon  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  Midland  district. 

Fbr  us  children  of  the  nineteenth  century,  however,  the  es- 
tablishment of  a  college  under  the  conditions  of  Sir  Josiah  Ma- 
son's Trust,  has  a  significance  apart  from  any  which  it  could 
have  possessed  a  hundred  years  ago.  It  appears  to  be  an  in- 
dication that  we  are  reaching  the  crisis  of  the  battle,  or  rather 
of  the  long  series  of  battles,  which  have  been  fought  over  educa- 
tion in  a  campaign  which  began  long  before  Priestley's  time, 
and  will  probably  not  be  finished  just  yet. 

In  the  last  century,  the  combatants  were  the  champions  of 


30  THOMAS  HENRY   HUXLEY 

ancient  literature,  on  the  one  side,  and  those  of  modern  litera- 
ture on  the  other ;  but,  some  thirty  years  ^  ago,  the  contest 
became  complicated  by  the  appearance  of  a  third  army,  ranged 
round  the  banner  of  Physical  Science. 

I  am  not  aware  that  any  one  has  authority  to  speak  in  the 
name  of  this  new  host.  For  it  must  be  admitted  to  be  some- 
what of  a  guerilla  force,  composed  largely  of  irregulars,  each  of 
whom  fights  pretty  much  for  his  own  hand.  But  the  impres- 
sions of  a  full  private,  who  has  seen  a  good  deal  of  service  in 
the  ranks,  respecting  the  present  position  of  affairs  and  the  con- 
ditions of  a  permanent  peace,  may  not  be  devoid  of  interest ; 
and  I  do  not  know  that  I  could  make  a  better  use  of  the  present 
opportunity  than  by  laying  them  before  you. 

From  the  time  that  the  first  suggestion  to  introduce  physical 
science  into  ordinary  education  was  timidly  whispered,  until 
now,  the  advocates  of  scientific  education  have  met  with  oppo- 
sition of  two  kinds.  On  the  one  hand,  they  have  been  pooh- 
poohed  by  the  men  of  business  who  pride  themselves  on  being 
the  representatives  of  practicality;  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  have  been  excommunicated  by  the  classical  scholars,  in 
their  capacity  of  Levites  in  charge  of  the  ark  of  ciilture  and 
monopolists  of  liberal  education. 

The  practical  men  beheved  that  the  idol  whom  they  worship  — 
rule  of  thumb  —  has  been  the  source  of  the  past  prosperity,  and 
will  suffice  for  the  future  welfare  of  the  arts  and  manufactures. 
They  were  of  opinion  that  science  is  speculative  rubbish ;  that 
theory  and  practice  have  nothing  to  do  with  one  another ;  and 
that  the  scientific  habit  of  mind  is  an  impediment,  rather  than 
an  aid,  in  the  conduct  of  ordinary  affairs. 

I  have  used  the  past  tense  in  speaking  of  the  practical  men  — 
for  although  they  were  very  formidable  thirty  years  ago,  I  am 
not  sure  that  the  pure  species  has  not  been  extirpated.     In  fact, 

1  The  advocacy  of  the  introduction  of  physical  science  into  general  edu- 
cation by  George  Combe  and  others  commenced  a  good  deal  earlier;  but 
the  movement  had  acquired  hardly  any  practical  force  before  the  time  to 
which  I  refer. 


SCIENCE  AND   CULTURE  31 

so  far  as  mere  argument  goes,  they  have  been  subjected  to  such 
a  Jeu  (Tenjer  that  it  is  a  miracle  if  any  have  escaped.  But  I 
have  remarked  that  your  typical  practical  man  has  an  unex- 
pected resemblance  to  one  of  Milton's  angels.  His  spiritual 
wounds,  such  as  are  inflicted  by  logical  weapons,  may  be  as 
deep  as  a  well  and  as  wide  as  a  church  door,  but  beyond  shedding 
a  few  drops  of  ichor,  celestial  or  otherwise,  he  is  no  whit  the 
worse.  So,  if  any  of  these  opponents  be  left,  I  will  not  waste 
time  in  vain  repetition  of  the  demonstrative  evidence  of  the  prac- 
tical value  of  science;  but  knowing  that  a  parable  will  some- 
times penetrate  where  syllogisms  fail  to  effect  an  entrance,  I  will 
offer  a  story  for  their  consideration. 

Once  upon  a  time,  a  boy,  with  nothing  to  depend  upon  but  his 
own  vigorous  nature,  was  thrown  into  the  thick  of  the  struggle 
for  existence  in  the  midst  of  a  great  manufacturing  population. 
He  seems  to  have  had  a  hard  fight,  inasmuch  as,  by  the  time  he 
was  thirty  years  of  age,  his  total  disposable  funds  amounted  to 
twenty  pounds.  Nevertheless,  middle  life  found  him  giving 
proof  of  his  comprehension  of  the  practical  problems  he  had  been 
roughly  called  upon  to  solve,  by  a  career  of  remarkable  prosperity. 

Finally,  having  reached  old  age,  with  its  well-earned  surround- 
ings of  "honor,  troops  of  friends,"  the  hero  of  my  story  be- 
thought himself  of  those  who  were  making  a  like  start  in  life, 
and  how  he  could  stretch  out  a  helping  hand  to  them. 

After  long  and  anxious  reflection  this  successful  practical  man 
of  business  could  devise  nothing  better  than  to  provide  them  with 
the  means  of  obtaining  "sound,  extensive,  and  practical  scien- 
tific knowledge."  And  he  devoted  a  large  part  of  his  wealth  and 
five  years  of  incessant  work  to  this  end. 

I  need  not  point  the  moral  of  a  tale  which,  as  the  solid  and  spa- 
cious fabric  of  the  Scientific  College  assures  us,  is  no  fable,  nor 
can  anything  which  I  can  say  intensify  the  force  of  this  practical 
answer  to  practical  objections. 

,  We  may  take  it  for  granted,  then,  that,  in  the  opinion  of  tnose 
best  qualified  to  judge,  the  diffusion  of  thorough  scientific  edu- 
cation is  an  absolutely  essential  condition  of  industrial  prog- 


32  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

ress ;  and  that  the  College  which  has  been  opened  to-day  will 
confer  an  inestimable  boon  upon  those  whose  livelihood  is  to  be 
gained  by  the  practice  of  the  arts  and  manufactures  of  the  dis- 
trict. 

The  only  question  worth  discussion  is,  whether  the  conditions, 
under  which  the  work  of  the  College  is  to  be  carried  out,  are  such 
as  to  give  it  the  best  possible  chance  of  achieving  permanent 
success. 

Sir  Josiah  Mason,  without  doubt  most  wisely,  has  left  very 
large  freedom  of  action  to  the  trustees,  to  whom  he  proposes 
ultimately  to  commit  the  administration  of  the  College,  so  that 
they  may  be  able  to  adjust  its  arrangements  in  accordance  with 
the  changing  conditions  of  the  future.  But,  with  respect  to 
three  points,  he  has  laid  most  explicit  injunctions  upon  both 
administrators  and  teachers. 

Party  politics  are  forbidden  to  enter  into  the  minds  of  either,  so 
far  as  the  work  of  the  College  is  concerned ;  theology  is  as  sternly 
banished  from  its  precincts ;  and  finally,  it  is  especially  declared 
that  the  College  shall  make  no  provision  for  "mere  literary  in- 
struction and  education." 

It  does  not  concern  me  at  present  to  dwell  upon  the  first  two 
injunctions  any  longer  than  may  be  needful  to  express  my  full 
conviction  of  their  wisdom.  But  the  third  prohibition  brings  us 
face  to  face  with  those  other  opponents  of  scientific  education, 
who  are  by  no  means  in  the  moribund  condition  of  the  practical 
man,  but  alive,  alert,  and  formidable. 

It  is  not  impossible  that  we  shall  hear  this  express  exclusion  of 
"literary  instruction  and  education"  from  a  College  which, 
nevertheless,  professes  to  give  a  high  and  efficient  education, 
sharply  criticized.  Certainly  the  time  was  that  the  Levites  of 
culture  would  have  sounded  their  trumpets  against  its  walls  as 
against  an  educational  Jericho. 

•  How  often  have  we  not  been  told  that  the  study  of  physical 
science  is  incompetent  to  confer  culture ;  that  it  touches  none  of 
the  higher  problems  of  life ;  and,  what  is  worse,  that  the  contin- 
ual devotion  to  scientific  studies  tends  to  generate  a  narrow  and 


SCIENCE  AND   CULTURE  33 

bigoted  belief  in  the  applicability  of  scientific  methods  to  the 
search  after  truth  of  all  kinds.  How  frequently  one  has  reason 
to  observe  that  no  reply  to  a  troublesome  argument  tells  so  well 
as  calling  its  author  a  "mere  scientific  specialist."  And,  as  I  am 
afraid  that  it  is  not  permissible  to  speak  of  this  form  of  opposition 
to  scientific  education  in  the  past  tense,  may  we  not  expect  to 
be  told  that  this,  not  only  omission,  but  prohibition,  of  "mere 
literary  instruction  and  education  "  is  a  patent  example  of  scien- 
tific narrow-mindedness  ? 

I  am  not  acquainted  with  Sir  Josiah  Mason's  reasons  for  the 
action  which  he  has  taken ;  but  if,  as  I  apprehend  is  the  case,  he 
refers  to  the  ordinary  classical  course  of  our  schools  and  universi- 
ties by  the  name  of  "mere  literary  instruction  and  education," 
I  venture  to  ofifer  sundry  reasons  of  my  own  in  support  of  that 
action. 

For  I  hold  very  strongly  by  two  convictions:  the  first  is, 
that  neither  the  discipline  nor  the  subject  matter  of  classical 
education  is  of  such  direct  value  to  the  student  of  physical  science 
as  to  justify  the  expenditure  of  valuable  time  upon  either ;  and 
the  second  is,  that  for  thej)urpose  of  attaining  real  culture,  an 
exclusively  scientific  education  is  at  least  as  effectual  as  an  ex- 
clusively literary  education. 

I  need  hardly  point  out  to  you  that  these  opinions,  especially 
the  latter,  are  diametrically  opposed  to  those  of  the  great  majority 
of  educated  Englishmen,  influenced  as  they  are  by  school  and 
university  traditions.  In  their  belief,  culture  is  obtainable  only 
by  a  liberal  education ;  and  a  liberal  education  is  synonymous, 
not  merely  with  education  and  instruction  in  literature,  but  in 
one  particular  form  of  literature;  namely,  that  of  Greek  and 
Roman  antiquity.  They  hold  that  the  man  who  has  learned 
Latin  and  Greek,  however  little,  is  educated ;  while  he  who  is 
versed  in  other  branches  of  knowledge,  however  deeply,  is  a  more 
or  less  respectable  specialist,  not  admissable  into  the  cultured 
caste.  The  stamp  of  the  educated  man,  the  University  degree,  is 
not  for  him. 

I  am  too'  well  acquainted  with  the  generous  catholicity  of 


34  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

spirit,  the  true  sympathy  with  scientific  thought,  which  pervades 
the  writings  of  our  chief  apostle  of  culture,  to  identify  him  with 
these  opinions ;  and  yet  one  may  cull  fram  one  and  another  of 
those  epistles  to  the  Philistines,^  which  so  much  delight  all  who 
do  not  answer  to  that  name,  sentences  which  lend  them  some 
support. 

Mr.  Arnold  tells  us  that  the  meaning  of  culture  is  "to  know  the 
best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world."  It  is  the 
criticism  of  life  contained  in  literature.  That  criticism  re- 
gards "Europe  as  being,  for  intellectual  and  spiritual  purposes, 
one  great  confederation,  bound  to  a  joint  action  and  working  to 
a  common  result ;  and  whose  members  have,  for  their  common 
outfit,  a  knowledge  of  Greek,  Roman,  and  Eastern  antiquity, 
and  of  one  another.  Special,  local,  and  temporary  advantages 
being  put  out  of  account,  that  modern  nation  will  in  the  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  sphere  make  most  progress,  which  most 
thoroughly  carries  out  this  program.  And  what  is  that  but 
saying  that  we  too  all  of  us,  as  individuals,  the  more  thoroughly 
we  carry  it  out,  shall  make  the  more  progress  ?  "  ^ 

We  have  here  to  deal  with  two  distinct  propositions.  The 
first,  that  a  criticism  of  life  is  the  essence  of  culture ;  the  second, 
that  literature  contains  the  materials  which  suffice  for  the  con- 
struction  of  such  a  criticism. 

I  think  that  we  must  all  assent  to  the  first  proposition.  For 
culture  certainly  means  something  quite  different  from  learning 
or  technical  skill.  It  implies  the  possession  of  an  ideal,  and  the 
habit  of  critically  estimating  the  value  of  things  by  comparison 
with  a  theoretic  standard.  Perfect  culture  should  supply  a  com- 
plete theory  of  life,  based  upon  a  clear  knowledge  alike  of  its 
possibilities  and  of  its  limitations. 

But  we  may  agree  to  all  this,  and  yet  strongly  dissent  from  the 
assumption  that  literature  alone  is  competent  to  supply  this 
knowledge.     After  having  learnt  all  that  Greek,  Roman,  and 

^  See  p.  Q.  —  Editors. 

^  The  Function  of  Criticism  at  the  Present  Time;  in  Essays  in  Criticism, 
First  Series  (Macmillan),  p.  39.  —  Editors. 


SCIENCE   AND   CULTURE  35 

Eastern  antiquity  have  thought  and  said,  and  all  that  modern 
literatures  have  to  tell  us,  it  is  not  self-evident  that  we  have  laid 
a  sufficiently  broad  and  deep  foundation  for  that  criticism  of 
life  that  constitutes  culture. 

Indeed,  to  any  one  acquainted  with  the  scope  of  physical 
science,  it  is  not  at  all  evident.  Considering  progress  only  in  the 
"intellectual  and  spiritual  sphere,"  I  find  myself  wholly  unable 
to  admit  that  either  nations  or  individuals  will  really  advance,  if 
their  common  outfit  draws  nothing  from  the  stores  of  physical 
science.  I  should  say  that  an  army,  without  weapons  of  preci- 
sion, and  with  no  particular  base  of  operations,  might  more  hope- 
fully enter  upon  a  campaign  on  the  Rhine,  than  a  man,  devoid 
of  a  knowledge  of  what  physical  science  has  done  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, upon  a  criticism  of  life. 

When  a  biologist  meets  with  an  anomaly,  he  instinctively 
turns  to  the  study  of  development  to  clear  it  up.  The  rationale 
of  contradictory  opinions  may  with  equal  confidence  be  sought  in 
history. 

It  is,  happily,  no  new  thing  that  Englishmen  should  employ 
their  wealth  in  building  and  endowing  institutions  for  educa- 
tional purposes.  But,  five  or  six  hundred  years  ago,  deeds  of 
foundation  expressed  or  implied  conditions  as  nearly  as  possible 
contrary  to  those  which  have  been  thought  expedient  by  Sir 
Josiah  Mason.  That  is  to  say,  physical  science  was  practically 
ignored,  while  a  certain  literary  training  was  enjoined  as  a  means 
to  the  acquirement  of  knowledge  which  was  essentially  theo- 
logical. 

The  reason  of  this  singular  contradiction  between  the  actions 
of  men  alike  animated  by  a  strong  and  disinterested  desire  to 
promote  the  welfare  of  their  fellows,  is  easily  discovered. 

At  that  time,  in  fact^  if  any  one  desired  knowledge  beyond 
such  as  could  be  obtained  by  his  own  observation,  or  by  common 
conversation,  his  first  necessity  was  to  learn  the  Latin  language, 
inasmuch  as  all  the  higher  knowledge  of  the  western  world  was 
contained  in  works  written  in  that  language.  Hence,  Latin 
grammar,  with  logic  and  rhetoric,  studied  through  Latin,  were 


36  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

the  fundamentals  of  education.  With  respect  to  the  substance 
of  the  knowledge  imparted  through  this  channel,  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  Scriptures,  as  interpreted  and  supplemented  by  the 
Romish  Church,  were  held  to  contain  a  complete  and  infallibly 
true  body  of  information. 

Theological  dicta  were,  to  the  thinkers  of  those  days,  that 
which  the  axioms  and  definitions  of  Euclid  are  to  the  geometers 
of  these.  The  business  of  the  philosophers  of  the  Middle  Ages 
was  to  deduce  from  the  data  furnished  by  the  theologians,  con- 
clusions in  accordance  with  ecclesiastical  decrees.  They  were 
allowed  the  high  privilege  of  showing,  by  logical  process,  how  and 
why  that  which  the  Church  said  was  true,  must  be  true.  And  if 
their  demonstrations  fell  short  of  or  exceeded  this  limit,  the 
Church  was  maternally  ready  to  check  their  aberrations,  if 
need  be,  by  the  help  of  the  secular  arm. 

Between  the  two,  our  ancestors  were  furnished  with  a  compact 
and  complete  criticism  of  life.  They  were  told  how  the  world 
began,  and  how  it  would  end ;  they  learned  that  all  material  ex- 
istence was  but  a  base  and  insignificant  blot  upon  the  fair  face  of 
the  spiritual  world,  and  that  nature  was,  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses, the  playground  of  the  devil ;  they  learned  that  the  earth  is 
the- center  of  the  visible  universe,  and  that  man  is  the  cynosure  of 
things  terrestrial ;  and  more  especially  is  it  inculcated  that  the 
course  of  nature  had  no  fixed  order,  but  that  it  could  be,  and  con- 
stantly was,  altered  by  the  agency  of  innumerable  spiritual  beings, 
good  and  bad,  according  as  they  were  moved  by  the  deeds  and 
prayers  of  men.  The  sum  and  substance  of  the  whole  doctrine 
was  to  produce  the  conviction  that  the  only  thing  really  worth 
knowing  in  this  world  was  how  to  secure  that  place  in  a  better 
which,  under  certain  conditions,  the  Church  promised. 

Our  ancestors  had  a  living  belief  in  this.theory  of  life,  and  acted 
upon  it  in  their  dealings  with  education,  as  in  all  other  matters. 
Culture  meant  saintliness  —  after  the  fashion  of  the  saints  of 
those  days ;  the  education  that  led  to  it  was,  of  necessity,  theo- 
logical ;  and  the  way  to  theology  lay  through  Latin. 

That  the  study  of  nature  —  further  than  was  requisite  for  the 


SCIENCE   AND    CULTURE  37 

satisfaction  of  everyday  wants  —  should  have  any  bearing  on 
human  life  was  far  from  the  thoughts  of  men  thus  trained.  In- 
deed, as  nature  had  been  cursed  for  man's  sake,  it  was  an  obvious 
conclusion  that  those  who  meddled  with  nature  were  likely  to 
come  into  pretty  close  contact  with  Satan.  And,  if  any  born 
scientific  investigator  followed  his  instincts,  he  might  safely 
reckon  upon  earning  the  reputation,  and  probably  upon  suffering 
the  fate,  of  a  sorcerer. 

Had  the  western  world  been  left  to  itself  in  Chinese  isolation, 
there  is  no  saying  how  long  this  state  of  things  might  have  en- 
dured. But,  happily,  it  was  not  left  to  itself.  Even  earlijer  than 
the  thirteenth  century,  the  development  of  Moorish  civilization 
in  Spain  and  the  great  movement  of  the  Crusades  had  introduced 
the  leaven  which,  from  that  day  to  this,  has  never  ceased  to  work. 
At  first,  through  the  intermediation  of  Arabic  translations,  after- 
wards, by  the  study  of  the  originals,  the  western  nations  of 
Europe  became  acquainted  with  the  writings  of  the  ancient  phi- 
losophers and  poets,  and,  in  time,  with  the  whole  of  the  vast  lit- 
erature of  antiquity. 

Whatever  there  was  of  high  intellectual  aspiration  or  dominant 
capacity  in  Italy,  France,  Germany,  and  England,  spent  itself 
for  centuries  in  taking  possession  of  the  rich  inheritance  left  by 
the  dead  civilizations  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Marvelously  aided 
by  the  invention  of  printing,  classical  learning  spread  and  flour- 
ished. Those  who  possessed  it  prided  themselves  on  having 
attained  the  highest  culture  then  within  the  reach  of  man- 
kind. 

And  justly.  For,  saving  Dante  on  his  solitary  pinnacle,  there 
was  no  figure  in  modern  literature  at  the  time  of  the  Renascence 
to  compare  with  the  men  of  antiquity ;  there  was  no  art  to  com- 
pete with  their  sculpture ;  there  was  no  physical  science  but 
that  which  Greece  had  created.  Above  all,  there  was  no  other 
example  of  perfect  intellectual  freedom  —  of  the  unhesitating 
acceptance  of  reason  as  the  sole  guide  of  truth  and  the  supreme 
arbiter  of  conduct. 

The  new  learning  necessarily  soon  exerted  a  profound  influ- 

174929 


38  THOMAS  HENRY   HUXLEY 

ence  upon  education.  The  language  of  the  monks  and  school- 
men seemed  little  better  than  gibberish  to  scholars  fresh  from 
Virgil  and  Cicero,  and  the  study  of  Latin  was  placed  upon  a  new 
foimdation.  Moreover,  Latin  itself  ceased  to  afford  the  sole  key 
to  knowledge.  The  student  who  sought  the  highest  thought  of 
antiquity,  found  only  a  second-hand  reflection  of  it  in  Roman 
literature,  and  turned  his  face  to  the  full  light  of  the  Greeks.  And 
after  a  battle,  not  altogether  dissimilar  to  that  which  is  at  present 
being  fought  over  the  teaching  of  physical  science,  the  study  of 
Greek  was  recognized  as  an  essential  element  of  all  higher  educa- 
tion. 

Thus  the  Humanists,^  as  they  were  called,  won  the  day ;  and 
the  great  reform  which  they  effected  was  of  incalculable  service  to 
mankind.  But  the  Nemesis  of  all  reformers  is  finality ;  and  the  re- 
formers of  education,  like  those  of  rehgion,  fell  into  the  profound, 
however  common,  error  of  mistaking  the  beginning  for  the  end  of 
the  work  of  reformation. 

The  representatives  of  the  Humanists,  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, take  their  stand  upon  classical  education  as  the  sole  avenue 
to  culture,  as  firmly  as  if  we  were  still  in  the  age  of  the  Renascence. 
Yet,  surely,  the  present  intellectual  relations  of  the  modern  and 
the  ancient  wjrlds  are  profoundly  different  from  those  which 
obtained  three  centuries  ago.  Leaving  aside  the  existence  of  a 
great  and  characteristically  modern  literature,  of  modern  paint- 
ing, and,  especially,  of  modern  music,  there  is  one  feature  of  the 
present  state  of  the  civilized  world  which  separates  it  more 
widely  from  the  Renascence  than  the  Renascence  was  separated 
from  the  Middle  Ages. 

This  distinctive  character  of  our  own  times  lies  in  the  vast 
and  constantly  increasing  part  which  is  played  by  natural  knowl- 
edge. Not  only  is  our  daily  life  shaped  by  it,  not  only  does  the 
prosperity  of  millions  of  men  depend  upon  it,  but  our  whole 
theory  of  life  has  long  been  influenced,  consciously  or  uncon- 

^  So  named  because  they  considered  that  human  interests  could  be 
better  promoted  by  the  study  of  the  ancient  classics  (liiterae  humaniores) 
than  by  the  theology  of  the  medieval  churchmen.  — -  Editors- 


^  SCIENCE  AND   CULTURE  39 

sciously,  by  the  general  conceptions  of  the  universe,  which  have 
been  forced  upon  us  by  physical  science. 

In  fact,  the  most  elementary  acquaintance  with  the  results  of 
scientific  investigation  shows  us  that  they  offer  a  broad  and  strik- 
ing contradiction  to  the  opinions  so  implicitly  credited  and  taught 
in  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  notions  of  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the  world  enter- 
tained by  our  forefathers  are  no  longer  credible.  It  is  very  cer- 
tain that  the  earth  is  not  the  chief  body  in  the  material  universe, 
and  that  the  world  is  not  subordinated  to  man's  use.  It  is  even 
more  certain  that  nature  is  the  expression  of  a  definite  order  with 
which  nothing  interferes,  and  that  the  chief  business  of  mankind 
is  to  learn  that  order  and  govern  themselves  accordingly.  More- 
over this  scientific  "criticism  of  life"  presents  itself  to  us  with 
different  credentials  from  any  other.  It  appeals  not  to  authority, 
nor  to  what  anybody  may  have  thought  or  said,  but  to  nature. 
It  admits  that  all  our  interpretations  of  natural  fact  are  more  or 
less  imperfect  and  symbolic,  and  bids  the  learner  seek  for  truth 
not  among  words  but  among  things.  It  warns  us  that  the  asser- 
tion which  outstrips  evidence  is  not  only  a  blunder  but  a  crime. 

The  purely  classical  education  advocated  by  the  representa- 
tives of  the  Humanists  in  our  day  gives  no  inkling  of  all  this. 
A  man  may  be  a  better  scholar  than  Erasmus,  and  know  no  more 
of  the  chief  causes  of  the  present  intellectual  fermentation  than 
Erasmus  did.  Scholarly  and  pious  persons,  worthy  of  all  respect, 
favor  us  with  allocutions  upon  the  sadness  of  the  antagonism  of 
science  to  the  medieval  way  of  thinking,  which  betray  an  igno- 
rance of  the  first  principles  of  scientific  investigation,  an  incapac- 
ity for  understanding  what  a  man  of  science  means  by  veracity, 
and  an  unconsciousness  of  the  weight  of  established  scientific 
truths,  which  is  almost  comical. 

There  is  no  great  force  in  the  tu  quoque^  argument,  or  else  the 
advocates  of  scientific  education  might  fairly  enough  retort  upon 
the  modern  Humanists  that  they  may  be  learned  specialists,  but 

1  "Thou  too!"  The  retort  which  turns  an  adversary's  argument 
against  himself.  —  Editors. 


40  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

that  they  possess  no  such  sound  foundation  for  a  criticism  of  life 
as  deserves  the  name  of  culture.  And,  indeed,  if  we  were  dis- 
posed to  be  cruel,  we  might  urge  that  the  Humanists  have  brought 
this  reproach  upon  themselves,  not  because  they  are  too  full  of 
the  spirit  of  the  ancient  Greek,  but  because  they  lack  it. 

The  period  of  the  Renascence  is  commonly  called  that  of  the 
"Revival  of  Letters,"  as  if  the  influences  then  brought  to  bear 
upon  the  mind  of  Western  Europe  had  been  wholly  exhausted  in 
the  field  of  literature.  I  think  it  is  very  commonly  forgotten 
that  the  revival  of  science,  effected  by  the  same  agency,  although 
less  conspicuous,  was  not  less  momentous. 

In  fact,  the  few  and  scattered  students  of  nature  of  that  day 
picked  up  the  clew  to  her  secrets  exactly  as  it  fell  from  the  hands 
of  the  Greeks  a  thousand  years  before.  The  foundations  of 
mathematics  were  so  well  laid  by  them  that  our  children  learn 
their  geometry  from  a  book  written  for  the  schools  of  Alexandria 
two  thousand  years  ago.^  Modern  astronomy  is  the  natural  con- 
tinuation and  development  of  the  work  of  Hipparchus  and  of 
Ptolemy ;  modern  physics  of  that  of  Democritus  and  of  Archi- 
medes ;  it  was  long  before  modern  biological  science  outgrew  the 
knowledge  bequeathed  to  us  by  Aristotle,  by  Theophrastus,  and 
by  Galen. 

We  cannot  know  all  the  best  thoughts  and  sayings  of  the 
Greeks  unless  we  know  what  they  thought  about  natural  phe- 
nomena. We  cannot  fully  apprehend  their  criticism  of  life  un- 
less we  understand  the  extent  to  which,  that  criticism  was  affected 
by  scientific  conceptions.  We  falsely  pretend  to  be  the  inheri- 
tors of  their  culture  unless  we  are  penetrated,  as  the  best  minds 
among  them  were,  with  an  unhesitating  faith  that  the  free  em- 
ployment of  reason,  in  accordance  with  scientific  method,  is  the 
sole  method  of  reaching  truth. 

Thus  I  venture  to  think  that  the  pretensions  of  our  modern 

Humanists  to  the  possession  of  the  monoply  of  culture  and  to  the 

exclusive  inheritance  of  the  spirit  of  antiquity  must  be  abated,  if 

not  abandoned.     But  I  should  be  very  sorry  that  anything  I 

1  Euclid's  treatise  on  geometry.  —  Editors. 


SCIENCE  AND    CULTURE         •  41 

have  said  should  be  taken  to  imply  a  desire  on  my  part  to  depre- 
ciate the  value  of  classical  education,  as  it  might  be  and  as  it 
sometimes  is.  The  native  capacities  of  mankind  vary  no  less 
than  their  opportunities ;  and  while  culture  is  one,  the  road  by 
which  one  man  may  best  reach  it  is  wholly  different  from  that 
which  is  most  advantageous  to  another.  Again,  while  scientific 
education  is  yet  inchoate  and  tentative,  classical  education  is 
thoroughly  well  organized  upon  the  practical  experience  of  genera- 
tions of  teachers.  So  that,  given  ample  time  for  learning  and 
destination  for  ordinary  life,  or  for  a  literary  career,  I  do  not 
think  that  a  young  Englishman  in  search  of  culture  can  do  better 
than  follow  the  course  usually  marked  out  for  him,  supplement- 
ing its  deficiencies  by  his  own  efforts. 

But  for  those  who  mean  to  make- science  their  serious  occupa- 
tion ;  or  who  intend  to  follow  the  profession  of  medicine ;  or  who 
have  to  enter  early  upon  the  business  of  life ;  for  all  these,  in  my 
opinion,  classical  education  is  a  mistake ;  and  it  is  for  this  reason 
that  I  am  glad  to  see  "mere  literary  education  and  instruc- 
tion" shut  out  from  the  curriculum  of  Sir  Josiah  Mason's  Col- 
lege, seeing  that  its  inclusion  would  probably  lead  to  the  in- 
troduction of  the  ordinary  smattering  of  Latin  and  Greek. 

Nevertheless,  I  am  the  last  person  to  question  the  importance 
of  genuine  literary  education,  or  to  suppose  that  intellectual  cul- 
ture can  be  complete  without  it.  An  exclusively  scientific  train- 
ing will  bring  about  a  mental  twist  as  surely  as  an  exclusively 
literary  training.  The  value  of  the  cargo  does  not  compensate 
for  a  ship's  being  out  of  trim ;  and  I  should  be  very  sorry  to 
think  that  the  Scientific  College  would  turn  out  none  but  lop- 
sided men. 

There  is  no  need,  however,  that  such  a  catastrophe  should 
happen.  Instruction  in  English,  French,  and  German  is  pro- 
vided, and  thus  the  three  greatest  literatures  of  the  modern  world 
are  made  accessible  to  the  student. 

French  and  German,  and  especially  the  latter  language,  are 
absolutely  indispensable  to  those  who  desire  full  knowledge  in 
any  department  of  science.     But  even  supposing  that  the  knowl- 


42        .   THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

edge  of  these  languages  acquired  is  not  more  than  sufficient  for 
purely  scientific  purposes,  every  Englishman  has,  in  his  native 
tongue,  an  almost  perfect  instrument  of  literary  expression ;  and, 
in  his  own  literature,  models  of  every  kind  of  literary  excellence. 
If  an  Englishman  cannot  get  literary  culture  out  of  his  Bible,  his 
Shakespeare,  his  Milton,  neither, in  my  belief,  will  the  profoundest 
study  of  Homer  and  Sophocles,  Virgil  and  Horace,  give  it  to  him. 

Thus,  since  the  constitution  of  the  College  makes  sufficient  pro- 
vision for  Hterary  as  well  as  for  scientific  education,  and  since 
artistic  instruction  is  also  contemplated,  it  seems  to  me  that  a 
fairly  complete  culture  is  offered  to  all  who  are  willing  to  take 
advantage  of  it. 

But  I  am  not  sure  that  at  this  point  the  "practical"  man, 
scotched  but  not  slain,  may  ask  what  all  this  talk  about  culture 
has  to  do  with  an  Institution,  the  object  of  which  is  defined  to  be 
"  to  promote  the  prosperity  of  the  manufactures  and  the  industry 
of  the  country."  He  may  suggest  that  what  is  wanted  for  this 
end  is  not  culture,  not  even  a  purely  scientific  discipline,  but 
simply  a  knowledge  of  applied  science. 

I  often  wish  that  this  phrase,  "applied  science,"  had  never  been 
invented.  For  it  suggests  that  there  is  a  sort  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge of  direct  practical  use,  which  can  be  studied  apart  from 
another  sort  of  scientific  knowledge,  which  is  of  no  practical  util- 
ity, and  which  is  termed  "pure  science."  But  there  is  no  more 
complete  fallacy  than  this.  What  people  call  applied  science  is 
nothing  but  the  application  of  pure  science  to  particular  classes 
of  problems.  It  consists  of  deductions  from  those  general  prin- 
ciples, established  by  reasoning  and  observation,  which  consti- 
tute pure  science.  No  one  can  safely  make  these  deductions 
until  he  has  a  firm  grasp  of  the  principles ;  and  he  can  obtain 
that  grasp  only  by  personal  experience  of  the  operations  of  ob- 
servation and  of  reasoning  on  which  they  are  founded. 

Almost  all  the  processes  employed  in  the  arts  and  manufac- 
tures fall  within  the  range  either  of  physics  or  of  chemistry.  In 
order  to  improve  them,  one  must  thoroughly  understand  them ; 
and  no  one  has  a  chance  of  really  understanding  them,  unless  he 


SCIENCE  AND   CULTURE  43 

has  obtained  that  mastery  of  principles  and  that  habit  of  deahng 
with  facts  which  is  given  by  long-continued  and  well-directed 
purely  scientific  training  in  the  physical  and  the  chemical  labora- 
tory. So  that  there  really  is  no  question  as  to  the  necessity  of 
purely  scientific  discipline,  even  if  the  work  of  the  College  were 
limited  by  the  narrowest  interpretation  of  its  stated  aims. 

And,  as  to  the  desirableness  of  a  wider  culture  than  that 
yielded  by  science  alone,  it  is  to  be  recollected  that  the  improve- 
ment of  manufacturing  processes  is  only  one  of  the  conditions 
which  contribute  to  the  prosperity  of  industry.  Industry  is  a 
means  and  not  an  end ;  and  manldnd  work  only  to  get  something 
which  they  want.  What  that  something  is  depends  partly  on 
their  innate,  and  partly  on  their  acquired,  desires. 

If  the  wealth  resulting  from  prosperous  industry  is  to  be  spent 
upon  the  gratification  of  unworthy  desires,  if  the  increasing  per- 
fection of  manufacturing  processes  is  to  be  accompanied  by  an 
increasing  debasement  of  those  who  carry  them  on,  I  do  not  see 
the  good  of  industry  and  prosperity. 

Now  it  is  perfectly  true  that  men's  views  of  what  is  desirable 
depend  upon  their  characters ;  and  that  the  innate  proclivities 
to  which  we  give  that  name  are  not  touched  by  any  amount  of 
instruction.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  even  mere  intellectual 
education  may  not,  to  an  indefinite  extent,  modify  the  practical 
manifestation  of  the  characters  of  men  in  their  actions,  by  sup- 
plying them  with  motives  unknown  to  the  ignorant.  A  pleas- 
ure-loving character  will  have  pleasure  of  some  sort ;  but,  if 
you  give  him  the  choice,  he  may  prefer  pleasures  which  do  not 
degrade  him  to  those  which  do.  And  this  choice  is  offered  to 
every  man  who  possesses  in  literary  or  artistic  culture  a  never- 
failing  source  of  pleasures,  which  are  neither  withered  by  age, 
nor  staled  by  custom,  nor  embittered  in  the  recollection  by  the 
pangs  of  self-reproach. 

If  the  Institution  opened  to-day  fulfills  the  intention  of  its 
founder,  the  picked  intelligences  among  all  classes  of  the  popula- 
tion of  this  district  will  pass  through  it.  No  child  born  in  Bir- 
mingham, henceforward,  if  he  have  the  capacity  to  profit  by  the 


44  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

opportunities  offered  to  him,  first  in  the  primary  and  other 
schools  and  afterwards  in  the  Scientific  College,  need  fail  to  ob- 
tain, not  merely  the  instruction,  but  the  culture  most  appropri- 
ate to  the  conditions  of  his  life. 

Within  these  walls,  the  future  employer  and  the  future  artisan 
may  sojourn  together  for  a  while,  and  carry,  through  all  their 
lives,  the  stamp  of  the  influences  then  brought  to  bear  upon  them. 
Hence,  it  is  not  beside  the  mark  to  remind  you,  that  the  pros- 
perity of  industry  depends  not  merely  upon  the  improvement  of 
manufacturing  processes,  not  merely  upon  the  ennobling  of  the 
individual  character,  but  upon  a  third  condition;  namely,  a  clear 
understanding  of  the  conditions  of  social  life  on  the  part  of 
both  the  capitalist  and  the  operative,  and  their  agreement  upon 
common  principles  of  social  action.  They  must  learn  that  so- 
cial phenomena  are  as  much  the  expression  of  natural  laws  as 
any  others ;  that  no  social  arrangements  can  be  permanent 
unless  they  harmonize  with  the  requirements  of  social  statics 
and  dynamics ;  and  that,  in  the  nature  of  things,  there  is  an 
arbiter  whose  decisions  execute  themselves. 

But  this  knowledge  is  only  to  be  obtained  by  the  application 
of  the  methods  of  investigation  adopted  in  physical  researches 
to  the  investigation  of  the  phenomena  of  society.  Hence,  I 
confess,  I  should  like  to  see  one  addition  made  to  the  excellent 
scheme  of  education  propounded  for  the  College,  in  the  shape 
of  provision  for  the  teaching  of  sociology.  For  though  we  are 
all  agreed  that  party  politics  are  to  have  no  place  in  the  instruc- 
tion of  the  College ;  yet  in  this  country,  practically  governed  as  it 
is  now  by  universal  suffrage,  every  man  who  does  his  duty  must 
exercise  political  functions.  And,  if  the  evils  which  are  insepar- 
able from  the  good  of  political  liberty  are  to  be  checked,  if  the 
perpetual  oscillation  of  nations  between  anarchy  and  despotism 
is  to  be  replaced  by  the  steady  march  of  self-restraining  freedom ; 
it  will  be  because  men  will  gradually  bring  themselves  to  deal 
with  political,  as  they  now  deal  with  scientific,  questions ;  to  be  as 
ashamed  of  undue  haste  and  partisan  prejudice  in  the  one  case  as 
in  the  other ;  and  to  believe  that  the  machinery  of  society  is  at 


SCIENCE   AND   CULTURE  45 

least  as  delicate  as  that  of  a  spinning  jenny,  and  as  little  likely 
to  be  improved  by  the  meddling  of  those  who  have  not  taken  the 
trouble  to  master  the  principles  of  its  action. 

In  conclusion,  I  am  sure  that  I  make  myself  the  mouthpiece  of 
all  present  in  offering  to  the  venerable  founder  of  the  Institution, 
which  now  commences  its  beneficent  career,  our  congratulations 
on  the  completion  of  his  work  ;  and  in  expressing  the  conviction, 
that  the  remotest  posterity  will  point  to  it  as  a  crucial  instance 
of  the  wisdom  which  natural  piety  leads  all  men  to  ascribe  to 
their  ancestors. 


Ill 

THE   ETHICS    OF    BELIEF 
William  Kingdon  Clifford 

[William  Kingdon  Clifford  (i 845-1 879)  was  a  celebrated  mathematician 
whose  intellectual  versatility  often  led  him  into  quite  other  fields  of  interest, 
as  the  title  of  this  essay  bears  witness.  He  was  educated  at  Cambridge, 
where  he  gained  a  reputation  as  a  mathematical  genius,  besides  winning 
distinction  in  literature  and  the  classics.  At  the  conclusion  of  his  residence 
in  1871  he  was  appointed  professor  of  applied  mathematics  at  University 
College,  London,  a  position  he  held  with  distinction  until  his  premature 
death  eight  years  later,  when,  although  but  thirty-four  years  of  age,  he  was 
recognized  as  one  of  the  leading  scientific  thinkers  of  his  day. 

While  Chfford's  classic  contributions  are  to  mathematical  literature,  the 
facile  and  original  bent  of  his  mind  is  well  attested  by  his  essays  on  meta- 
physics and  philosophy  and  his  habit  of  applying  his  mathematically  thought 
out  ideas  to  ethical  and  religious  questions.  The  Ethics  of  Belief,  which 
typifies  the  author's  felicity  of  phrase  and  illustration  as  well  as  his  power  of 
subtle  if  not  always  convincing  reasoning,  may  be  regarded  as  a  plea  for  an 
agnostic  attitude  in  all  matters  of  commonly  accepted  belief,  religious  or 
otherwise.  In  this  connection  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  Clifford  as  an 
undergraduate  was  a  High  Churchman,  fond  of  experimenting  in  schemes  for 
the  reconciliation  of  science  and  dogma;  but  later  under  the  influence  of 
Darwin  and  Herbert  Spencer  he  came  to  regard  the  possibility  of  such  a  rec- 
onciliation as  highly  improbable.  Clifford's  arguments  for  the  rejection  of 
all  beliefs  unsupported  by  "sufficient  evidence"  are  answered  by  Professor 
James  in  the  next  essay. 

The  Ethics  of  Belief  was  first  pubUshed  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for 
January,  1877.] 

I.   The  Duty  of  Inquiry 

A  shipowner  was  about  to  send  to  sea  an  emigrant  ship. 
He  knew  that  she  was  old,  and  not  overwell  built  at  the  first ; 
that  she  had  seen  many  seas  and  climes,  and  often  had  needed 
repairs.  Doubts  had  been  suggested  to  him  that  possibly  she 
was  not  seaworthy.     These  doubts  preyed  upon  his  mind,  and 

46 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  47 

made  him  unhappy ;  he  thought  that  perhaps  he  ought  to  have 
her  thoroughly  overhauled  and  refitted,  even  though  this  should 
put  him  to  great  expense.  Before  the  ship  sailed,  however,  he 
succeeded  in  overcoming  these  melancholy  reflections.  He  said 
to  himself  that  she  had  gone  safely  through  so  many  voyages  and 
weathered  so  many  storms,  that  it  was  idle  to  suppose  that  she 
would  not  come  safely  home  from  this  trip  also.  He  would  put 
his  trust  in  Providence,  which  could  hardly  fail  to  protect  all 
these  unhappy  families  that  were  leaving  their  fatherland  to  seek 
for  better  times  elsewhere.  He  would  dismiss  from  his  mind  all 
ungenerous  suspicions  about  the  honesty  of  builders  and  contrac- 
tors. In  such  ways  he  acquired  a  sincere  and  comfortable  con- 
viction that  his  vessel  was  thoroughly  safe  and  seaworthy ;  he 
watched  her  departure  with  a  light  heart,  and  benevolent  wishes 
for  the  success  of  the  exiles  in  their  strange  new  home  that  was  to 
be ;  and  he  got  his  insurance  money  when  she  went  down  in  mid- 
ocean  and  told  no  tales. 

What  shall  we  say  of  him  ?  Surely  this,  that  he  was  verily 
guilty  of  the  death  of  those  men.  It  is  admitted  that  he  did 
sincerely  believe  in  the  soundness  of  his  ship ;  but  the  sincerity 
of  his  conviction  can  in  nowise  help  him,  because  he  had  no  right 
to  believe  on  such  evidence  as  was  before  him.  He  had  acquired  his 
belief  not  by  honestly  earning  it  in  patient  investigation,  but  by 
stifling  his  doubts.  And  although  in  the  end  he  may  have  felt 
so  sure  about  it  that  he  could  not  think  otherwise,  yet  inasmuch 
as  he  had  knowingly  and  willingly  worked  himself  into  that 
frame  of  mind,  he  must  be  held  responsible  for  it. 

Let  us  alter  the  case  a  little,  and  suppose  that  the  ship  was  not 
unsound  after  all ;  that  she  made  her  voyage  safely,  and  many 
others  after  it.  Will  that  diminish  the  guilt  of  her  owner  ?  Not 
one  jot.  When  an  action  is  once  done,  it  is  right  or  wrong  for- 
ever ;  no  accidental  failure  of  its  good  or  evil  fruits  can  possibly 
alter  that.  The  man  would  not  have  been  innocent ;  he  would 
only  have  been  not  found  out.  The  question  of  right  or  wrong 
has  to  do  with  the  origin  of  his  belief,  not  the  matter  of  it ;  not 
what  it  was,  but  how  he  got  it ;  not  whether  it  turned  out  to  be 


48  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

true  or  false,  but  whether  he  had  a  right  to  believe  on  such  evi- 
dence as  was  before  him. 

There  was  once  an  island  in  which  some  of  the  inhabitants 
professed  a  religion  teaching  neither  the  doctrine  of  original  sin 
nor  that  of  eternal  punishment.  A  suspicion  got  abroad  that  the 
professors  of  this  religion  had  made  use  of  unfair  means  to  get 
their  doctrines  taught  to  children.  They  were  accused  of  wrest- 
ing the  laws  of  their  country  in  such  a  way  as  to  remove  children 
from  the  care  of  their  natural  and  legal  guardians ;  and  even 
of  stealing  them  away  and  keeping  them  concealed  from  their 
friends  and  relations.  A  certain  number  of  men  formed  them- 
selves into  a  society  for  the  purpose  of  agitating  the  public  about 
this  matter.  They  published  grave  accusations  against  individual 
citizens  of  the  highest  position  and  character,  and  did  all  in  their 
power  to  injure  these  citizens  in  the  exercise  of  their  professions. 
So  great  was  the  noise  they  made,  that  a  Commission  was  ap- 
pointed to  investigate  the  facts ;  but  after  the  Commission  had 
carefully  inquired  into  all  the  evidence  that  could  be  got,  it  ap- 
peared that  the  accused  were  innocent.  Not  only  had  they  been 
accused  on  insufficient  evidence,  but  the  evidence  of  their  inno- 
cence was  such  as  the  agitators  might  easily  have  obtained,  if 
they  had  attempted  a  fair  inquiry.  After  these  disclosures  the 
inhabitants  of  that  country  looked  upon  the  members  of  the  agi- 
tating society,  not  only  as  persons  whose  judgment  was  to  be 
distrusted,  but  also  as  no  longer  to  be  counted  honorable  men. 
For  although  they  had  sincerely  and  "conscientiously"  believed 
in  the  charges  they  had  made,  yet  they  had  no  right  to  believe  on 
such  evidence  as  was  before  them.  Their  sincere  convictions,  in- 
stead of  being  honestly  earned  by  patient  inquiring,  were  stolen 
by  listening  to  the  voice  of  prejudice  and  passion. 

Let  us  vary  this  case  also,  and  suppose,  other  things  remain- 
ing as  before,  that  a  still  more  accurate  investigation  proved 
the  accused  to  have  been  really  guilty.  Would  this  make  any 
difference  in  the  guilt  of  the  accusers  ?  Clearly  not ;  the  ques- 
tion is  not  whether  their  belief  was  true  or  false,  but  whether 
they  entertained  it  on  wrong  grounds.     They  would  no  doubt 


THE   ETHICS  OF   BELIEF  49 

say,  ''Now  you  see  that  we  were  right  after  all;  next  time 
perhaps  you  will  believe  us."  And  they  might  be  believed,  but 
they  would  not  thereby  become  honorable  men.  They  would  not 
be  innocent,  they  would  only  be  not  found  out.  Every  one  of 
them,  if  he  chose  to  examine  himself  inforo  conscienticB,^  would 
know  that  he  had  acquired  and  nourished  a  belief,  when  he  had 
no  right  to  believe  on  such  evidence  as  was  before  him ;  and 
therein  he  would  know  that  he  had  done  a  wrong  thing. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  that  in  both  of  these  supposed  cases 
it  is  not  the  belief  which  is  judged  to  be  wrong,  but  the  action 
following  upon  it.  The  shipowner  might  say,  "I  am  perfectly 
certain  that  my  ship  is  sound,  but  still  I  feel  it  is  my  duty  to  have 
her  examined,  before  trusting  the  Hves  of  so  many  people  to  her." 
And  it  might  be  said  to  the  agitator,  "However  convinced  you 
were  of  the  justice  of  your  cause  and  the  truth  of  your  convic- 
tions, you  ought  not  to  have  made  a  pubHc  attack  upon  any 
man's  character  until  you  had  examined  the  evidence  on  both 
sides  with  the  utmost  patience  and  care." 

In  the  first  place,  let  us  admit  that,  so  far  as  it  goes,  this  view 
of  the  case  is  right  and  necessary ;  right,  because  even  when  a 
man's  belief  is  so  fixed  that  he  cannot  think  otherwise,  he  still 
has  a  choice  in  regard  to  the  action  suggested  by  it,  and  so  can- 
not escape  the  duty  of  investigating  on  the  ground  of  the 
strength  of  his  convictions;  and  necessary,  because  those  who 
are  not  yet  capable  of  controlling  their  feelings  and  thoughts 
must  have  a  plain  rule  dealing  with  overt  acts. 

But  this  being  premised  as  necessary,  it  becomes  clear  that  it 
is  not  sufficient,  and  that  our  previous  judgment  is  required  to 
supplement  it.  For  it  is  not  possible  so  to  sever  the  faith  from 
the  action  it  suggests  as  to  condemn  the  one  without  condemning 
the  other.  No  man  holding  a  strong  belief  on  one  side  of  a  ques- 
tion, or  even  wishing  to  hold  a  belief  on  one  side,  can  investigate 
it  with  such  fairness  and  completeness  as  if  he  were  really  in  doubt 
and  unbiased ;  so  that  the  existence  of  a  belief,  not  founded  on  fair 
inquiry,  unfits  a  man  for  the  performance  of  this  necessary  duty. 
^  Before  the  tribunal  of  his  conscience.  —  Editors. 


50  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

Nor  is  that  truly  a  belief  at  all  which  has  not  some  influence 
upon  the  actions  of  him  who  holds  it.  He  who  truly  believe? 
that  which  prompts  him  to  an  action  has  looked  upon  the  action 
to  lust  after  it;  he  has  committed  it  already  in  his  heart.  If  a  be- 
lief is  not  realized  immediately  in  open  deeds,  it  is  stored  up  for 
the  guidance  of  the  future.  It  goes  to  make  a  part  of  that  aggre- 
gate of  beliefs  which  is  the  link  between  sensation  and  action  at 
every  moment  of  all  our  lives,  and  which  is  so  organized  and 
compacted  together  that  no  part  of  it  can  be  isolated  from  the 
rest,  but  every  new  addition  modifies  the  structure  of  the  whole. 
No  real  belief,  however  trifling  and  fragmentary  it  may  seem,  is 
ever  trvily  insignificant ;  it  prepares  us  to  receive  more  of  its  like, 
confirms  those  which  resembled  it  before,  and  weakens  others ; 
and  so  gradually  it  lays  a  stealthy  train  in  our  inmost  thoughts, 
which  may  some  day  explode  into  overt  action,  and  leave  its 
stamp  upon  our  character  forever. 

And  no  one  man's  belief  is  in  any  case  a  private  matter  which 
concerns  himself  alone.  Our  lives  are  guided  by  that  general 
conception  of  the  course  of  things  which  has  been  created  by 
society  for  social  purposes.  Our  words,  our  phrases,  our  forms 
and  processes  and  modes  of  thought,  are  common  property, 
fashioned  and  perfected  from  age  to  age;  an  heirloom,  which 
every  succeeding  generation  inherits  as  a  precious  deposit  and 
a  sacred  trust,  to  be  handed  on  to  the  next  one,  not  unchanged, 
but  enlarged  and  purified,  with  some  clear  marks  of  its  proper 
handiwork.  Into  this,  for  good  or  ill,  is  woven  every  belief  of 
every  man  who  has  speech  of  his  fellows.  An  awful  privilege, 
and  an  awful  responsibility,  that  we  should  help  to  create  the 
world  in  which  posterity  will  live. 

In  the  two  supposed  cases  which  have  been  considered,  it  has 
been  judged  wrong  to  believe  on  insufficient  evidence,  or  to  nour- 
ish belief  by  suppressing  doubts  and  avoiding  investigation. 
The  reason  of  this  judgment  is  not  far  to  seek  ;  it  is  that  in  both 
these  cases  the  belief  held  by  one  man  was  of  great  importance 
to  other  men.  But  forasmuch  as  no  belief  held  by  one  man, 
however  seemingly  trivial  the  belief,  and  however  obscure  the 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  51 

believer,  is  ever  actually  insignificant  or  without  its  effect  on  the 
fate  of  mankind,  we  have  no  choice  but  to  extend  our  judgment 
to  all  cases  of  belief  whatever.  Belief,  that  sacred  faculty,  which 
prompts  the  decisions  of  our  will,  and  knits  into  harmonious  work- 
ing all  the  compacted  energies  of  our  being,  is  ours  not  for  our- 
selves but  for  humanity.  It  is  rightly  used  on  truths  which 
have  been  established  by  long  tradition  and  waiting  toil,  and 
which  have  stood  in  the  fierce  light  of  free  and  fearless  question- 
ing. Then  it  helps  to  bind  men  together,  and  to  strengthen  and 
direct  their  common  action.  It  is  desecrated  when  given  to  un- 
proved and  unquestioned  statements,  for  the  solace  and  private 
pleasure  of  the  believer ;  to  add  a  tinsel  splendor  to  the  plain, 
straight  road  of  our  life,  and  display  a  bright  mirage  beyond  it ; 
or  even  to  drown  the  common  sorrows  of  our  kiAd  by  a  self- 
deception  which  allows  them  not  only  to  cast  down,  but  also  to 
degrade  us.  Whoso  would  deserve  well  of  his  fellows  in  this 
matter  will  guard  the  purity  of  his  belief  with  a  very  fanaticism 
of  jealous  care,  lest  at  any  time  it  should  rest  on  an  unworthy 
object,  and  catch  a  stain  which  can  never  be  wiped  away. 

It  is  not  only  the  leader  of  men,  statesman,  philosopher,  or 
poet,  that  owes  this  bounden  duty  to  mankind.  Every  rustic 
who  delivers  in  the  village  alehouse  his  slow  infrequent  sentences, 
may  help  to  kill  or  keep  alive  the  fatal  superstitions  which  clog 
his  race.  Every  hard-worked  wife  of  an  artisan  may  transmit 
to  her  children  beliefs  which  shall  knit  society  together,  or  rend 
it  in  pieces.  No  simplicity  of  mind,  no  obscurity  of  station,  can 
escape  the  universal  duty  of  questioning  all  that  we  believe. 

It  is  true  that  this  duty  is  a  hard  one,  and  the  doubt  which 
comes  out  of  it  is  often  a  very  bitter  thing.  It  leaves  us  bare 
and  powerless  where  we  thought  that  we  were  safe  and  strong. 
To  know  all  about  anything  is  to  know  how  to  deal  with  it  under 
all  circumstances.  We  feel  much  happier  and  more  secure  when 
we  think  we  know  precisely  what  we  do,  no  matter  what  hap- 
pens, than  when  we  have  lost  our  way  and  do  not  know  where  to 
turn.  And  if  we  have  supposed  ourselves  to  know  all  about 
anything,  and  to  be  capable  of  doing  what  is  fit  in  regard  to  it, 


52  WILLIAM  KINGDOM   CLIFFORD 

we  naturally  do  not  like  to  find  that  we  are  really  ignorant  and 
powerless,  that  we  have  to  begin  again  at  the  beginning,  and  try  to 
learn  what  the  thing  is  and  how  it  is  to  be  dealt  with  —  if  indeed 
anything  can  be  learned  about  it.  It  is  the  sense  of  power  at- 
tached to  a  sense  of  knowledge  that  makes  men  desirous  of  believ- 
ing, and  afraid  of  doubting. 

This  sense  of  power  is  the  highest  and  best  of  pleasures  when 
the  belief  on  which  it  is  founded  is  a  true  belief,  and  has  been 
fairly  earned  by  investigation.  For  then  we  may  justly  feel 
that  it  is  common  property,  and  holds  good  for  others  as  well  as 
for  ourselves.  Then  we  may  be  glad,  not  that  /  have  learned 
secrets  by  which  I  am  safer  and  stronger,  but  that  we  men  have 
got  mastery  over  more  of  the  world ;  and  we  shall  be  strong,  not 
for  ourselves,  but  in  the  name  of  Man  and  in  his  strength.  But 
if  the  belief  has  been  accepted  on  insufficient  evidence,  the 
pleasure  is  a  stolen  one.  Not  only  does  it  deceive  ourselves  by 
giving  us  a  sense  of  power  which  wx  do  not  really  possess,  but 
it  is  sinful,  because  it  is  stolen  in  defiance  of  our  duty  to  man- 
kind. That  duty  is,  to  guard  ourselves  from  such  beliefs  as 
from  a  pestilence,  which  may  shortly  master  our  own  body  and 
then  spread  to  the  rest  of  the  town.  What  would  be  thought  of 
one  who,  for  the  sake  of  a  sw^eet  fruit,  should  deliberately  run 
the  risk  of  bringing  a  plague  upon  his  family  and  his  neighbors  ? 

And,  as  in  other  such  cases,  it  is  not  the  risk  only  which  has  to 
be  considered ;  for  a  bad  action  is  always  bad  at  the  time  when  it 
is  done,  no  matter  what  happens  afterwards.  Every  time  we  let 
ourselves  believe  for  unworthy  reasons,  we  weaken  our  powers  of 
self-control,  of  doubting,  of  judicially  and  fairly  weighing  evi- 
dence. We  all  sufifer  severely  enough  from  the  maintenance  and 
support  of  false  beliefs  and  the  fatally  wrong  actions  which  they 
lead  to,  and  the  e\il  born  when  one  such  belief  is  entertained  is 
great  and  wide.  But  a  greater  and  wider  evil  arises  when  the 
credulous  character  is  maintained  and  supported,  when  a  habit  of 
belie\dng  for  unworthy  reasons  is  fostered  and  made  permanent. 
If  I  steal  money  from  any  person,  there  may  be  no  harm  done 
by  the  mere  transfer  of  possession ;  he  may  not  feel  the  loss,  or 


THE   ETHICS  OF   BELIEF  53 

it  may  prevent  him  from  using  the  money  badly.  But  I  cannot 
help  doing  this  great  wrong  towards  Man,  that  I  make  myself 
dishonest.  What  hurts  society  is  not  that  it  should  lose  its 
property,  but  that  it  should  become  a  den  of  thieves ;  for  then  it 
must  cease  to  be  society.  This  is  why  we  ought  not  to  do  evil 
that  good  may  come ;  for  at  any  rate  this  great  evil  has  come, 
that  we  have  done  evil  and  are  made  wicked  thereby.  In  like 
manner,  if  I  let  myself  believe  anything  on  insufficient  evidence, 
there  may  be  no  great  harm  done  by  the  mere  belief ;  it  may  be 
true  after  all,  or  I  may  never  have  occasion  to  exhibit  it  in  out- 
ward acts.  But  I  cannot  help  doing  this  great  wrong  towards 
Man,  that  I  make  myself  credulous.  The  danger  to  society  is 
not  merely  that  it  should  believe  wrong  things,  though  that  is 
great  enough ;  but  that  it  should  become  credulous,  and  lose  the 
habit  of  testing  things  and  inquiring  into  them ;  for  then  it  must 
sink  back  into  savagery. 

The  harm  which  is  done  by  credulity  in  a  man  is  not  confined 
to  the  fostering  of  a  credulous  character  in  others,  and  consequent 
support  of  false  beliefs.  Habitual  want  of  care  about  what  I  be- 
lieve leads  to  habitual  want  of  care  in  others  about  the  truth  of 
what  is  told  to  me.  Men  speak  the  truth  to  one  another  when 
each  reveres  the  truth  in  his  own  mind  and  in  the  other's  mind  • 
but  how  shall  my  friend  revere  the  truth  in  my  mind  when  I 
myself  am  careless  about  it,  when  I  believe  things  because  I 
want  to  believe  them,  and  because  they  are  comforting  and  pleas- 
ant? Will  he  not  learn  to  cry,  "Peace,"  to  me,  when  there  is 
no  peace?  By  such  a  course  I  shall  surround  myself  with  a 
thick  atmosphere  of  falsehood  and  fraud,  and  in  that  I  must 
live.  It  may  matter  little  to  me,  in  my  cloud-castle  of  sweet 
illusions  and  darling  lies;  but  it  matters  much  to  Man  that  I 
have  made  my  neighbors  ready  to  deceive.  The  credulous  man 
is  father  to  the  liar  and  the  cheat ;  he  lives  in  the  bosom  of  this 
his  family,  and  it  is  no  marvel  if  he  should  become  even  as  they 
are.  So  closely  are  our  duties  knit  together,  that  whoso  shall 
keep  the  whole  law,  and  yet  offend  in  one  point,  he  is  guilty  of 
all. 


54  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

To  sum  up :  it  is  wrong  always,  everywhere,  and  for  any  one, 
to  believe  anything  upon  insufficient  evidence. 

If  a  man,  holding  a  belief  which  he  was  taught  in  childhood  or 
persuaded  of  afterwards,  keeps  down  and  pushes  away  any  doubts 
which  arise  about  it  in  his  mind,  purposely  avoids  the  reading  of 
books  and  the  company  of  men  that  call  in  question  or  discuss  it, 
and  regards  as  impious  those  questions  which  cannot  easily  be 
asked  without  disturbing  it ;  the  hf  e  of  that  man  is  one  long  sin 
against  mankind. 

If  this  judgment  seems  harsh  when  applied  to  those  simple 
souls  who  have  never  known  better,  who  have  been  brought  up 
from  the  cradle  with  a  horror  of  doubt,  and  taught  that  their 
eternal  welfare  depends  on  what  they  believe ;  then  it  leads  to 
the  very  serious  question,  Who  hath  made  Israel  to  sin? 

It  may  be  permitted  me  to  fortify  this  judgment  with  the 
sentence  of  Milton  ^ :  — ■ 

"A  man  may  be  a  heretic  in  the  truth ;  and  if  he  beUeve  things 
only  because  his  pastor  says  so,  or  the  assembly  so  determine, 
without  knowing  other  reason,  though  his  belief  be  true,  yet  the 
very  truth  he  holds  becomes  his  heresy." 

And  with  the  famous  aphorism  of  Coleridge  ^ :  — 

"He  who  begins  by  loving  Christianity  better  than  Truth, 
will  proceed  by  loving  his  own  sect  or  Church  better  than  Chris- 
tianity, and  end  in  loving  himself  better  than  all." 

Inquiry  into  the  evidence  of  a  doctrine  is  not  to  be  made  once 
for  all,  and  then  taken  as  finally  settled.  It  is  never  lawful  to 
stifle  a  doubt ;  for  either  it  can  be  honestly  answered  by  means 
of  the  inquiry  already  made,  or  else  it  proves  that  the  inquiry 
was  not  complete. 

"But,"  says  one,  "I  am  a  busy  man ;  I  have  no  time  for  the 
long  course  of  study  which  would  be  necessary  to  make  me  in  any 
degree  a  competent  judge  of  certain  questions,  or  even  able  to 
understand  the  nature  of  the  arguments."  Then  he  should  have 
no  time  to  believe. 

^  Areopagitica.  ^  Aids  to  Reflection. 


THE  ETHICS  OF   BELIEF  55 

II.   The  Weight  or  Authority 

Are  we  then  to  become  universal  skeptics,  doubting  everything, 
afraid  always  to  put  one  foot  before  the  other  until  we  have  per- 
sonally tested  the  firmness  of  the  road  ?  Are  we  to  deprive  our- 
selves of  the  help  and  guidance  of  that  vast  body  of  knowledge 
which  is  daily  growing  upon  the  world,  because  neither  we  nor  any 
other  one  person  can  possibly  test  a  hundredth  part  of  it  by  imme- 
diate experiment  or  observation,  and  because  it  would  not  be  com- 
pletely proved  if  we  did  ?  Shall  we  steal  and  tell  lies  because  we 
have  had  no  personal  experience  wide  enough  to  justify  the  belief 
that  it  is  wrong  to  do  so  ? 

There  is  no  practical  danger  that  such  consequences  will  ever 
follow  from  scrupulous  care  and  self-control  in  the  matter  of 
belief.  Those  men  who  have  most  nearly  done  their  duty  in 
this  respect  have  found  that  certain  great  principles,  and  these 
most  fitted  for  the  guidance  of  life,  have  stood  out  more  and 
more  clearly  in  proportion  to  the  care  and  honesty  with  which 
they  were  tested,  and  have  acquired  in  this  way  a  practical  cer- 
tainty. The  beliefs  about  right  and  wrong  which  guide  our 
actions  in  dealing  with  men  in  society,  and  the  beliefs  about 
physical  nature  which  guide  our  actions  in  dealing  with  animate 
and  inanimate  bodies,  these  never  suffer  from  investigation ; 
they  can  take  care  of  themselves,  without  being  propped  up  by 
"acts  of  faith,"  the  clamor  of  paid  advocates,  or  the  suppression 
of  contrary  evidence.  Moreover,  there  are  many  cases  in  which 
it  is  our  duty  to  act  upon  probabilities,  although  the  evidence 
is  not  such  as  to  justify  present  belief ;  because  it  is  precisely 
by  such  action,  and  by  observation  of  its  fruits,  that  evidence  is 
got  which  may  justify  future  belief.  So  that  we  have  no  reason 
to  fear  lest  a  habit  of  conscientious  inquiry  should  paralyze  the 
actions  of  our  daily  life. 

But  because  it  is  not  enough  to  say,  "It  is  wrong  to  believe 
on  unworthy  evidence,"  without  saying  also  what  evidence  is 
worthy,  we  shall  now  go  on  to  inquire  under  what  circumstances 
it  is  lawful  to  believe  on  the  testimony  of  others ;  and  then,  fur- 


56  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

ther,  we  shall  inquire  more  generally  when  and  why  we  may  believe 
that  which  goes  beyond  our  own  experience,  or  even  beyond  the 
experience  of  mankind. 

In  what  cases,  then,  let  us  ask  in  the  first  place,  is  the  testi- 
inony  of  a  man  unworthy  of  belief  ?  He  may  say  that  which  is 
untrue  either  knowingly  or  unknowingly.  In  the  first  case  he  is 
lying,  and  his  moral  character  is  to  blame ;  in  the  second  case  he 
is  ignorant  or  mistaken,  and  it  is  only  his  knowledge  or  his  judg- 
ment which  is  in  fault.  In  order  that  we  may  have  the  right  to 
accept  his  testimony  as  ground  for  belic/ing  what  he  says,  we 
must  have  reasonable  grounds  for  trusting  his  veracity,  that  he  is 
really  trying  to  speak  the  truth  so  far  as  he  knows  it ;  his  knowl- 
edge, that  he  has  had  opportunities  of  knowing  the  truth  about 
this  matter ;  and  his  judgment,  that  he  has  made  a  proper  use  of 
those  opportunities  in  coming  to  the  conclusion  which  he  affirms. 

However  plain  and  obvious  these  considerations  may  be,  so 
that  no  man  of  ordinary  intelligence,  reflecting  on  the  matter, 
could  fail  to  arrive  at  them,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  a  great 
many  persons  do  habitually  disregard  them  in  weighing  testi- 
mony. Of  the  two  questions,  equally  important  to  the  trust- 
worthiness of  a  witness,  "Is  he  dishonest?"  and  "May  he  be 
mistaken?"  the  majority  of  mankind  are  perfectly  satisfied  if 
one  can,  with  some  show  of  probability,  be  answered  in  the  nega- 
tive. The  excellent  moral  character  of  a  man  is  alleged  as 
ground  for  accepting  his  statements  about  things  which  he  can- 
not possibly  have  known.  A  Mohammedan,  for  example,  will 
tell  us  that  the  character  of  his  Prophet  was  so  noble  and  majestic 
that  it  commands  the  reverence  even  of  those  who  do  not  believe 
in  his  mission.  So  admirable  was  his  moral  teaching,  so  wisely 
put  together  the  great  social  machine  which  he  created,  that 
his  precepts  have  not  only  been  accepted  by  a  great  portion  of 
mankind,  but  have  actually  been  obeyed.  His  institutions  have 
on  the  one  hand  rescued  the  negro  from  savagery,  and  on  the 
other  hand  have  taught  civilization  to  the  advancing  West ; 
and  although  the  races  which  held  the  highest  forms  of  his  faith, 
and  most  fully  embodied  his  mind  and  thought,  have  all  been 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  57 

conquered  and  swept  away  by  barbaric  tribes,  yet  the  history 
of  their  marvelous  attainments  remains  as  an  imperishable 
glory  to  Islam.  Are  we  to  doubt  the  word  of  a  man  so  great  and 
so  good?  Can  we  suppose  that  this  magnificent  genius,  this 
splendid  moral  hero,  has  lied  to  us  about  the  most  solemn  and 
sacred  matters?  The  testimony  of  Mohammed  is  clear,  that 
there  is  but  one  God,  and  that  he,  Mohammed,  is  his  prophet; 
that  if  we  believe  in  him  we  shall  enjoy  everlasting  felicity,  but 
that  if  we  do  not  we  shall  be  damned.  This  testimony  rests  on 
the  most  awful  of  foundations,  the  revelation  of  heaven  itself ; 
for  was  he  not  visited  by  the  angel  Gabriel,  as  he  fasted  and 
prayed  in  his  desert  cave,  and  allowed  to  enter  into  the  blessed 
fields  of  Paradise?  Surely  God  is  God,  and  Mohammed  is 
the  Prophet  of  God. 

What  should  we  answer  to  this  Mussulman  ?  First,  no  doubt, 
we  should  be  tempted  to  take  exception  against  his  view  of  the 
character  of  the  Prophet  and  the  uniformly  beneficial  influence 
of  Islam :  before  we  could  go  with  him  altogether  in  these 
matters  it  might  seem  that  we  should  have  to  forget  many 
terrible  things  of  which  we  have  heard  or  read.  But  if  we  chose 
to  grant  him  all  these  assumptions,  for  the  sake  of  argument, 
and  because  it  is  difficult  both  for  the  faithful  and  for  infidels  to 
discuss  them  fairly  and  without  passion ;  still  we  should  have 
something  to  say  which  takes  away  the  ground  of  his  belief,  and 
therefore  shows  that  it  is  wrong  to  entertain  it.  Namely  this : 
the  character  of  Mohammed  is  excellent  evidence  that  he  was 
honest  and  spoke  the  truth  so  far  as  he  knew  it ;  but  it  is  no  evi- 
dence at  all  that  he  knew  what  the  truth  was.  What  means 
could  he  have  of  knowing  that  the  form  which  appeared  to  him 
to  be  the  angel  Gabriel  was  not  a  hallucination,  and  that  his 
apparent  visit  to  Paradise  was  not  a  dream?  Grant  that  he 
himself  was  fully  persuaded  and  honestly  believed  that  he  had 
the  guidance  of  heaven,  and  was  the  vehicle  of  a  supernatural 
revelation ;  how  could  he  know  that  this  strong  conviction  was 
not  a  mistake  ?  Let  us  put  ourselves  in  his  place ;  we  shall  find 
that  the  more  completely  we  endeavor  to  realize  what  passed 


58  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

through  his  mind,  the  more  clearly  we  shall  perceive  that  the 
Prophet  could  have  had  no  adequate  ground  for  the  belief  in 
his  own  inspiration.  It  is  most  probable  that  he  himself  never 
doubted  of  the  matter,  or  thought  of  asking  the  question ;  but  we 
are  in  the  position  of  those  to  whom  the  question  has  been  asked, 
and  who  are  bound  to  answer  it.  It  is  known  to  medical  observers 
that  solitude  and  want  of  food  are  powerful  means  of  producing 
delusion  and  of  fostering  a  tendency  to  mental  disease.  Let  us 
suppose,  then,  that  I,  like  Mohammed,  go  into  desert  places  to 
fast  and  pray ;  what  things  can  happen  to  me  which  will  give  me 
the  right  to  believe  that  I  am  divinely  inspired  ?  Suppose  that 
I  get  information,  apparently  from  a  celestial  visitor,  which  upon 
being  tested  is  found  to  be  correct.  I  cannot  be  sure,  in  the  first 
place,  that  the  celestial  visitor  is  not  a  figment  of  my  own  mind, 
and  that  the  information  did  not  come  to  me,  unknown  at  the 
time  to  my  consciousness,  through  some  subtle  channel  of 
sense.  But  if  my  visitor  were  a  real  visitor,  and  for  a  long  time 
gave  me  information  which  was  found  to  be  trustworthy,  this 
would  indeed  be  good  ground  for  trusting  him  in  the  future  as  to 
such  matters  as  fall  within  human  powers  of  verification;  but 
it  would  not  be  ground  for  trusting  his  testimony  as  to  any 
other  matters.  For  although  his  tested  character  would  justify 
me  in  believing  that  he  spoke  the  truth  so  far  as  he  knew,  yet  the 
same  question  would  present  itself  —  what  ground  is  there  for 
supposing  that  he  knows  ? 

Even  if  my  supposed  visitor  had  given  me  such  information, 
subsequently  verified  by  me,  as  proved  him  to  have  means  of 
knowledge  about  verifiable  matters  far  exceeding  my  own ;  this 
would  not  justify  me  in  believing  what  he  said  about  matters  that 
are  not  at  present  capable  of  verification  by  man.  It  would  be 
ground  for  interesting  conjecture,  and  for  the  hope  that,  as  the 
fruit  of  our  patient  inquiry,  we  might  by  and  by  attain  to  such 
a  means  of  verification  as  should  rightly  turn  conjecture  into  be- 
lief. For  belief  belongs  to  man,  and  to  the  guidance  of  human 
affairs :  no  belief  is  real  unless  it  guide  our  actions,  and  those 
very  actions  supply  a  test  of  its  truth. 


THE   ETHICS   OF    BELIEF  59 

But,  it  may  be  replied,  the  acceptance  of  Islam  as  a  system  is 
just  that  action  which  is  prompted  by  belief  in  the  mission  of  the 
Prophet,  and  which  will  serve  for  a  test  of  its  truth.  Is  it 
possible  to  believe  that  a  system  which  has  succeeded  so  well  is 
really  founded  upon  a  delusion?  Not  only  have  individual 
saints  found  joy  and  peace  in  believing,  and  verified  those 
spiritual  experiences  which  are  promised  to  the  faithful,  but  na- 
tions also  have  been  raised  from  savagery  or  barbarism  to  a 
higher  social  state.  Surely  we  are  at  liberty  to  say  that  the 
belief  has  been  acted  upon,  and  that  it  has  been  verified. 

It  requires,  however,  but  little  consideration  to  show  that  what 
has  really  been  verified  is  not  at  all  the  supernal  character  of  the 
Prophet's  mission,  or  the  trustworthiness  of  his  authority  in 
matters  which  we  ourselves  cannot  test ;  but  only  his  practical 
wisdom  in  certain  very  mundane  things.  The  fact  that  be- 
lievers have  found  joy  and  peace  in  believing  gives  us  the  right 
to  say  that  the  doctrine  is  a  comfortable  doctrine,  and  pleasant 
to  the  soul ;  but  it  does  not  give  us  the  right  to  say  that  it  is  true. 
And  the  question  which  our  conscience  is  always  asking  about 
that  which  we  are  tempted  to  believe  is  not  "Is  it  comfortable 
and  pleasant  ? "  but  "Is  it  true ? "  That  the  Prophet  preached 
certain  doctrines,  and  predicted  that  spiritual  comfort  would  be 
found  in  them,  proves  only  his  sympathy  with  human  nature 
and  his  knowledge  of  it ;  but  it  does  not  prove  his  superhuman 
knowledge  of  theology. 

And  if  we  admit  for  the  sake  of  argument  (for  it  seems  that  we 
cannot  do  more)  that  the  progress  made  by  Moslem  nations  in 
certain  cases  was  really  due  to  the  system  formed  and  sent  forth 
into  the  world  by  Mohammed ;  we  are  not  at  liberty  to  conclude 
from  this  that  he  was  inspired  to  declare  the  truth  about  things 
which  we  cannot  verify.  We  are  only  at  liberty  to  infer  the  ex- 
cellence of  his  moral  precepts,  or  of  the  means  which  he  devised 
for  so  working  upon  men  as  to  get  them  obeyed,  or  of  the  social 
and  political  machinery  which  he  set  up.  And  it  would  require 
a  great  amount  of  careful  examination  into  the  history  of  those 
nations  to  determine  which  of  these  things  had  the  greater  share 


6o  WILLIAM   KINGDOM   CLIFFORD 

in  the  result.  So  that  here  again  it  is  the  Prophet's  knowledge  ol 
human  nature,  and  his  sympathy  with  it,  that  are  verified ;  not 
his  divine  inspiration,  or  his  knowledge  of  theology. 

If  there  were  only  one  Prophet,  indeed,  it  might  well  seem  a 
difficult  and  even  an  ungracious  task  to  decide  upon  what  points 
we  would  trust  him,  and  on  what  we  would  doubt  his  authority ; 
seeing  what  help  and  furtherance  all  men  have  gained  in  all  ages 
from  those  who  saw  more  clearly,  who  felt  more  strongly,  and 
who  sought  the  truth  with  more  single  heart  than  their  weaker 
brethren.  But  there  is  not  only  one  Prophet ;  and  while  the  con- 
sent of  many  upon  that  which,  as  men,  they  had  real  means  of 
knowing  and  did  know,  has  endured  to  the  end,  and  been  honor- 
ably built  into  the  great  fabric  of  human  knowledge ;  the  diverse 
witness  of  some  about  that  which  they  did  not  and  could  not 
know  remains  as  a  warning  to  us  that  to  exaggerate  the  prophetic 
authority  is  to  misuse  it,  and  to  dishonor  those  who  have  sought 
only  to  help  and  further  us  after  their  power.  It  is  hardly  in 
human  nature  that  a  man  should  quite  accurately  gauge  the 
limits  of  his  own  insight ;  but  it  is  the  duty  of  those  who  profit 
by  his  work  to  consider  carefully  where  he  may  have  been  carried 
beyond  it.  If  we  must  needs  embalm  his  possible  errors  along 
with  his  solid  achievements,  and  use  his  authority  as  an  excuse 
for  believing  what  he  cannot  have  known,  we  make  of  his  good- 
ness an  occasion  to  sin. 

To  consider  only  one  other  such  witness :  the  followers  of 
Buddha  have  at  least  as  much  right  to  appeal  to  individual  and 
social  experience  in  support  of  the  authority  of  the  Eastern 
saviour.  The  special  mark  of  his  religion,  it  is  said,  that  in  which 
it  has  never  been  surpassed,  is  the  comfort  and  consolation  which 
it  gives  to  the  sick  and  sorrowful,  the  tender  sympathy  with 
which  it  soothes  and  assuages  all  the  natural  griefs  of  men.  And 
surely  no  triumph  of  social  morality  can  be  greater  or  nobler  than 
that  which  has  kept  nearly  half  the  human  race  from  persecuting 
in  the  name  of  religion.  If  we  are  to  trust  the  accounts  of  his 
early  followers,  he  believed  himself  to  have  come  down  upon 
earth  mth  a  divine  and  cosmic  mission  to  set  rolling  the  wheel  of 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  6i 

the  law.  Being  a  prince,  he  emptied  himself  of  his  kingdom,  and 
of  his  free  will  became  acquainted  with  misery,  that  he  might 
learn  how  to  meet  and  subdue  it.  Could  such  a  man  speak 
falsely  about  solemn  things  ?  And  as  for  his  knowledge,  was  he 
not  a  man  miraculous,  with  powers  more  than  man's  ?  He  was 
born  of  woman  without  the  help  of  man ;  he  rose  into  the  air  and 
was  transfigured  before  his  kinsmen  ;  at  last  he  went  up  bodily 
into  heaven  from  the  top  of  Adam's  Peak.  Is  not  his  word  to 
be  believed  in  when  he  testifies  of  heavenly  things  ? 

If  there  were  only  he,  and  no  other,  with  such  claims!  But 
there  is  Mohammed  wdth  his  testimony ;  we  cannot  choose  but 
hsten  to  them  both.  The  Prophet  tells  us  that  there  is  one  God, 
and  that  we  shall  live  forever  in  joy  or  misery,  according  as  we 
believe  in  the  Prophet  or  not.  The  Buddha  says  that  there  is  no 
God,  and  that  we  shall  be  annihilated  by  and  by  if  we  are  good 
enough.  Both  cannot  be  infallibly  inspired ;  one  or  the  other 
must  have  been  the  victim  of  a  delusion,  and  thought  he  knew 
that  which  he  really  did  not  know.  Who  shall  dare  to  say 
which  ?  and  how  can  we  justify  ourselves  in  believing  that  the 
other  was  not  also  deluded  ? 

We  are  led,  then,  to  these  judgments  following.  The  goodness 
and  greatness  of  a  man  do  not  justify  us  in  accepting  a  belief  upon 
the  warrant  of  his  authority,  unless  there  are  reasonable  grounds 
for  supposing  that  he  knew  the  truth  of  what  he  was  saying.  And 
there  can  be  no  grounds  for  supposing  that  a  man  knows  that 
which  we,  without  ceasing  to  be  men,  could  not  be  supposed  to 
verify. 

If  a  chemist  tells  me,  who  am  no  chemist,  that  a  certain  sub- 
stance can  be  made  by  putting  together  other  substances  in 
certain  proportions  and  subjecting  them  to  a  known  process,  I 
am  quite  justified  in  believing  this  upon  his  authority,  unless  I 
know  anything  against  his  character  or  his  judgment.  For  his 
professional  training  is  one  which  tends  to  encourage  veracity 
and  the  honest  pursuit  of  truth,  and  to  produce  a  dislike  of  hasty 
conclusions  and  slovenly  investigation.  And  I  have  reasonable 
ground  for  supposing  that  he  knows  the  truth  of  what  he  is  saying, 


62  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

for  although  I  am  no  chemist,  I  can  be  made  to  understand  so 
much  of  the  methods  and  processes  of  the  science  as  makes  it 
conceivable  to  me  that,  without  ceasing  to  be  man,  I  might  verify 
the  statement.  I  may  never  actually  verify  it,  or  even  see  any 
experiment  which  goes  towards  verifying  it ;  but  still  I  have 
quite  reason  enough  to  justify  me  in  believing  that  the  verifica- 
tion is  within  the  reach  of  human  appliances  and  powers,  and  in 
particular  that  it  has  been  actually  performed  by  my  informant. 
His  result,  the  belief  to  which  he  has  been  led  by  his  inquiries, 
is  valid  not  only  for  himself  but  for  others ;  it  is  watched  and 
tested  by  those  who  are  working  in  the  same  ground,  and  who 
know  that  no  greater  service  can  be  rendered  to  science  than  the 
purification  of  accepted  results  from  the  errors  which  may  have 
crept  into  them.  It  is  in  this  way  that  the  result  becomes  com- 
mon property,  a  right  object  of  belief,  which  is  a  social  affair  and 
matter  of  public  business.  Thus  it  is  to  be  observed  that  his 
authority  is  valid  because  there  are  those  who  question  it  and 
verify  it ;  that  it  is  precisely  this  process  of  examining  and  purify- 
ing that  keeps  alive  among  investigators  the  love  of  that  which 
shall  stand  all  possible  tests,  the  sense  of  public  responsibility  as 
of  those  whose  work,  if  well  done,  shall  remain  as  the  enduring 
heritage  of  mankind. 

But  if  my  chemist  tells  me  that  an  atom  of  oxygen  has  existed 
unaltered  in  weight  and  rate  of  vibration  throughout- all  time,  I 
have  no  right  to  believe  this  on  his  authority,  for  it  is  a  thing 
which  he  cannot  know  without  ceasing  to  be  man.  He  may 
quite  honestly  believe  that  this  statement  is  a  fair  inference  from 
his  experiments,  but  in  that  case  his  judgment  is  at  fault.  A 
very  simple  consideration  of  the  character  of  experiments  would 
show  him  that  they  never  can  lead  to  results  of  such  a  kind ;  that 
being  themselves  only  approximate  and  limited,  they  cannot 
give  us  knowledge  which  is  exact  and  universal.  No  eminence 
of  character  and  genius  can  give  a  man  authority  enough  to 
justify  us  in  believing  him  when  he  makes  statements  implying 
exact  or  universal  knowledge. 

Again,  an  Arctic  explorer  may  tell  us  that  in  a  given  latitude 


THE   ETHICS  OF   BELIEF  63 

and  longitude  he  has  experienced  such  and  such  a  degree  of  cold, 
that  the  sea  was  of  such  a  depth,  and  the  ice  of  such  a  character. 
We  should  be  quite  right  to  believe  him  in  the  absence  of  any 
stain  upon  his  veracity.  It  is  conceivable  that  we  might,  with- 
out ceasing  to  be  men,  go  there  and  verify  his  statement;  it  can 
be  tested  by  the  witness  of  his  companions,  and  there  is  adequate 
ground  for  supposing  that  he  knows  the  truth  of  what  he  is  say- 
ing. But  if  an  old  whaler  tells  us  that  the  ice  is  three  hundred 
feet  thick  all  the  way  up  to  the  Pole,  we  shall  not  be  justified  in 
believing  him.  For  although  the  statement  may  be  capable  of 
verification  by  man,  it  is  certainly  not  capable  of  verification  by 
him,  with  any  means  and  appliances  which  he  has  possessed ; 
and  he  must  have  persuaded  himself  of  the  truth  of  it  by  some 
means  which  does  not  attach  any  credit  to  his  testimony.  Even 
if,  therefore,  the  matter  affirmed  is  within  the  reach  of  human 
knowledge,  we  have  no  right  to  accept  it  upon  authority  unless 
it  is  within  the  reach  of  our  informant's  knowledge. 

What  shall  we  say  of  that  authority,  more  venerable  and  au- 
gust than  any  individual  witness,  the  time-honored  tradition  of 
the  human  race  ?  An  atmosphere  of  beliefs  and  conceptions  has 
been  formed  by  the  labors  and  struggles  of  our  forefathers,  which 
enables  us  to  breathe  amid  the  various  and  complex  circumstances 
of  our  life.  It  is  around  and  about  us  and  within  us ;  we  cannot 
think  except  in  the  forms  and  processes  of  thought  wldch  it 
supplies.  Is  it  possible  to  doubt  and  to  test  it  ?  and  if  possible, 
is  it  right  ? 

We  shall  find  reason  to  answer  that  it  is  not  only  possible  and 
right,  but  our  bounden  duty ;  that  the  main  purpose  of  the  tradi- 
tion itself  is  to  supply  us  with  the  means  of  asking  questions,  of 
testing  and  inquiring  into  things ;  that  if  we  misuse  it,  and  take 
it  as  a  collection  of  cut  and  dried  statements,  to  be  accepted 
without  further  inquiry,  we  are  not  only  injuring  ourselves  here, 
but  by  refusing  to  do  our  part  towards  the  building  up  of  the 
fabric  which  shall  be  inherited  by  our  children,  we  are  tending  to 
cut  off  ourselves  and  our  race  from  the  human  line. 

Let  us  take  care  to  distinguish  a  kind  of  tradition  which  es- 


64  WILLIAM  KINGDOM   CLIFFORD 

pecially  requires  to  be  examined  and  called  in  question,  because 
it  especially  shrinks  from  inquiry.  Suppose  that  a  medicine  man 
in  Central  Africa  tells  his  tribe  that  a  certain  powerful  medicine 
in  his  tent  will  be  propitiated  if  they  kill  their  cattle ;  and  that 
the  tribe  believe  him.  Whether  the  medicine  was  propitiated  or 
not,  there  are  no  means  of  verifying,  but  the  cattle  are  gone. 
Still  the  belief  may  be  kept  up  in  the  tribe  that  propitiation  has 
been  effected  in  this  way ;  and  in  a  later  generation  it  will  be  all 
the  easier  for  another  medicine  man  to  persuade  them  to  a  similar 
act.  Here  the  only  reason  for  belief  is  that  everybody  has  be- 
lieved the  thing  for  so  long  that  it  must  be  true.  And  yet  the 
belief  was  founded  on  fraud,  and  has  been  propagated  by  credu- 
lity. That  man  will  undoubtedly  do  right,  and  be  a  friend  of 
men,  who  shall  call  it  in  question  and  see  that  there  is  no  evidence 
for  it,  help  his  neighbors  to  see  as  he  does,  and  even,  if  need  be, 
go  into  the  holy  tent  and  break  the  medicine. 

The  rule  which  should  guide  us  in  such  cases  is  simple  and  ob- 
vious enough :  that  the  aggregate  testimony  of  our  neighbors  is 
subject  to  the  same  conditions  as  the  testimony  of  any  one  of 
them.  Namely,  we  have  no  right  to  believe  a  thing  true  because 
everybody  says  so,  unless  there  are  good  grounds  for  believing 
that  some  one  person  at  least  has  the  means  of  knowing  what  is 
true,  and  is  speaking  the  truth  so  far  as  he  knows  it.  However 
many  nations  and  generations  of  men  are  brought  into  the  wit- 
ness box,  they  cannot  testify  to  anything  which  they  do  not 
know.  Every  man  who  has  accepted  the  statement  from  some- 
body else,  without  himself  testing  and  verifying  it,  is  out  of  court; 
his  word  is  worth  nothing  at  all.  And  when  we  get  back  at  last 
to  the  true  birth  and  beginning  of  the  statement,  two  serious 
questions  must  be  disposed  of  in  regard  to  him  who  first  made  it : 
was  he  mistaken  in  thinking  that  he  knew  about  this  matter,  or 
was  he  lying  ? 

This  last  question  is  unfortunately  a  very  actual  and  practical 
one,  even  to  us  at  this  day  and  in  this  country.  We  have  no 
occasion  to  go  to  La  Salette,  or  to  Central  Africa,  or  to  Lourdes 
for  examples  of  immoral  and  debasing  superstition.     It  is  only 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  65 

too  possible  for  a  child  to  grow  up  in  London  surrounded  by  an 
atmosphere  of  beliefs  fit  only  for  the  savage,  which  have  in  our 
own  time  been  founded  in  fraud  and  propagated  by  credulity. 

Laying  aside,  then,  such  tradition  as  is  handed  on  without 
testing  by  successive  generations,  let  us  consider  that  which  is 
truly  built  up  out  of  the  common  experience  of  mankind.  This 
great  fabric  is  for  the  guidance  of  our  thoughts,  and  through 
them  of  our  actions,  both  in  the  moral  and  in  the  material  world. 
In  the  moral  world,  for  example,  it  gives  us  the  conceptions  of 
right  in  general,  of  justice,  of  truth,  of  beneficence,  and  the  like. 
These  are  given  as  conceptions,  not  as  statements  or  propositions; 
they  answer  to  certain  definite  instincts,  which  are  certainly 
within  us,  however  they  came  there.  That  it  is  right  to  be  benefi- 
cent is  a  matter  of  immediate  personal  experience ;  for  when  a 
man  retires  within  himself  and  there  finds  something,  wider  and 
more  lasting  than  his  solitary  personality,  which  says,  "I  want 
to  do  right,"  as  well  as,  "I  want  to  do  good  to  man,"  he  can 
verify  by  direct  observation  that  one  instinct  is  founded  upon 
and  agrees  fully  with  the  other.  And  it  is  his  duty  so  to  verify 
this  and  all  similar  statements. 

The  tradition  says  also,  at  a  definite  place  and  time,  that  such 
and  such  actions  are  just,  or  true,  or  beneficent.  For  all  such 
rules  a  further  inquiry  is  necessary,  since  they  are  sometimes 
established  by  an  authority  other  than  that  of  the  moral  sense 
founded  on  experience.  Until  recently,  the  moral  tradition  of 
our  own  country  —  and  indeed  of  all  Europe  —  taught  that  it 
was  beneficent  to  give  money  indiscriminately  to  beggars.  But 
the  questioning  of  this  rule,  and  investigation  into  it,  led  men  to 
see  that  true  beneficence  is  that  which  helps  a  man  to  do  the 
work  which  he  is  most  fitted  for,  not  that  which  keeps  and 
encourages  him  in  idleness ;  and  that  to  neglect  this  distinc- 
tion in  the  present  is  to  prepare  pauperism  and  misery  for 
the  future.  By  this  testing  and  discussion,  not  only  has  prac- 
tice been  purified  and  made  more  beneficent,  but  the  very  con- 
ception of  beneficence  has  been  made  wider  and  wiser.  Now 
here  the  great  social  heirloom  consists  of  two  parts :  the  instinct 


66  WILLIAM  KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

of  beneficence,  which  makes  a  certain  side  of  our  nature,  when 
predominant,  wish  to  do  good  to  men ;  and  the  intellectual  con- 
ception of  beneficence,  which  we  can  compare  with  any  proposed 
course  of  conduct  and  ask,  "  Is  this  beneficent  or  not  ?  "  By  the 
continual  asking  and  answering  of  such  questions  the  conception 
grows  in  breadth  and  distinctness,  and  the  instinct  becomes 
strengthened  and  purified.  It  appears  then  that  the  great  use 
of  the  conception,  the  intellectual  part  of  the  heirloom,  is  to 
enable  us  to  ask  questions ;  that  it  grows  and  is  kept  straight  by 
means  of  these  questions ;  and  if  we  do  not  use  it  for  that  purpose 
we  shall  gradually  lose  it  altogether,  and  be  left  with  a  mere  code 
of  regulations  which  cannot  rightly  be  called  morality  at  all. 

Such  considerations  apply  even  more  obviously  and  clearly,  if 
possible,  to  the  store  of  beliefs  and  conceptions  which  our  fathers 
have  amassed  for  us  in  respect  of  the  material  world.  We  are 
ready  to  laugh  at  the  rule  of  thumb  of  the  Australian,  who 
continues  to  tie  his  hatchet  to  the  side  of  the  handle,  although 
the  Birmingham  fitter  has  made  a  hole  on  purpose  for  him  to  put 
the  handle  in.  His  people  have  tied  up  hatchets  so  for  ages : 
who  is  he  that  he  should  set  himself  up  against  their  wisdom? 
He  has  sunk  so  low  that  he  cannot  do  what  some  of  them  must 
have  done  in  the  far  distant  past  —  call  in  question  an  estab- 
lished usage,  and  invent  or  learn  something  better.  Yet  here,  in 
the  dim  beginning  of  knowledge,  where  science  and  art  are  one, 
we  find  only  the  same  simple  rule  which  applies  to  the  highest 
and  deepest  growths  of  that  cosmic  Tree ;  to  its  loftiest  flower- 
tipped  branches  as  well  as  to  the  profoundest  of  its  hidden  roots ; 
the  rule,  namely,  that  what  is  stored  up  and  handed  down  to  us 
is  rightly  used  by  those  who  act  as  the  makers  acted,  when  they 
stored  it  up ;  those  who  use  it  to  ask  further  questions,  to  examine, 
to  investigate ;  who  try  honestly  and  solemnly  to  find  out  what 
is  the  right  way  of  looking  at  things  and  of  dealing  with  them. 

A  question  rightly  asked  is  already  half  answered,  said  Jacobi ; 
we  may  add  that  the  method  of  solution  is  the  other  half  of  the 
answer,  and  that  the  actual  result  counts  for  nothing  by  the  side 
of  these  two.     For  an  example  let  us  go  to  the  telegraph,  where 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  67 

theory  and  practice,  grown  each  to  years  of  discretion,  are 
marvelously  wedded  for  the  fruitful  service  of  men.  Ohm 
found  that  the  strength  of  an  electric  current  is  directly  propor- 
tional to  the  strength  of  the  battery  which  produces  it,  and  in- 
versely as  the  length  of  the  wire  along  which  it  has  to  travel.  This 
is  called  Ohm's  law ;  but  the  result,  regarded  as  a  statement  to  be 
believed,  is  not  the  valuable  part  of  it.  The  first  half  is  the 
question :  what  relation  holds  good  between  these  quantities  ? 
So  put,  the  question  involves  already  the  conception  of  strength 
of  current,  and  of  strength  of  battery,  as  quantities  to  be  measured 
and  compared ;  it  hints  clearly  that  these  are  the  things  to  be 
attended  to  in  the  study  of  electric  currents.  The  second  half  is 
the  method  of  investigation ;  how  to  measure  these  quantities, 
what  apparatus  are  required  for  the  experiment,  and  how  are 
they  to  be  used  ?  The  student  who  begins  to  learn  about  elec- 
tricity is  not  asked  to  begin  in  Ohm's  law ;  he  is  made  to  under- 
stand the  question,  he  is  placed  before  the  apparatus,  and  he  is 
taught  to  verify  it.  He  learns  to  do  things,  not  to  think  he 
knows  things ;  to  use  instruments  and  to  ask  questions,  not  to 
accept  a  traditional  statement.  The  question  which  required  a 
genius  to  ask  it  rightly  is  answered  by  a  tyro.  If  Ohm's  law  were 
suddenly  lost  and  forgotten  by  all  men,  while  the  question  and 
the  method  of  solution  remained,  the  result  could  be  rediscovered 
in  an  hour.  But  the  result  by  itself,  if  known  to  a  people  who 
could  not  comprehend  the  value  of  the  question  or  the  means  of 
solving  it,  wotdd  be  like  a  watch  in  the  hands  of  a  savage  who 
could  not  wind  it  up,  or  an  iron  steamship  worked  by  Spanish 
engineers. 

In  regard,  then,  to  the  sacred  tradition  of  humanity,  we  learn 
that  it  consists,  not  in  propositions  or  statements  which  are  to 
be  accepted  and  beheved  on  the  authority  of  the  tradition,  but  in 
questions  rightly  asked,  in  conceptions  which  enable  us  to  ask 
further  questions,  and  in  methods  of  answering  questions.  The 
value  of  all  these  things  depends  on  their  being  tested  day  by 
day.  The  very  sacredness  of  the  precious  deposit  imposes  upon 
us  the  duty  and  the  responsibility   of  testing  it,  of  purifying 


68  WILLIAM  KINGDOM  CLIFFORD 

and  enlarging  it  to  the  utmost  of  our  power.  He  who  makes  use 
of  its  results  to  stifle  his  own  doubts,  or  to  hamper  the  inquiry  of 
others,  is  guilty  of  a  sacrilege  which  centuries  shall  never  be  able 
to  blot  out.  When  the  labors  and  questionings  of  honest  and 
brave  men  shall  have  built  up  the  fabric  of  known  truth  to  a 
glory  which  we  in  this  generation  can  neither  hope  for  nor  im- 
agine ;  in  that  pure  and  holy  temple  he  shall  have  no  part  no^* 
lot,  but  his  name  and  his  works  shall  be  cast  out  into  the  dark- 
ness of  oblivion  forever. 

III.  The  Limits  of  Inference 

The  question,  in  what  cases  we  may  believe  that  which  goes 
beyond  our  experience,  is  a  very  large  and  delicate  one,  extending 
to  the  whole  range  of  scientific  method,  and  requiring  a  consider- 
able increase  in  the  application  of  it  before  it  can  be  answered 
with  anything  approaching  to  completeness.  But  one  rule,  lying 
on  the  threshold  of  the  subject,  of  extreme  simplicity  and  vast 
practical  importance,  may  here  be  touched  upon  and  shortly  laid 
down. 

A  little  reflection  will  show  us  that  every  belief,  even  the  sim- 
plest and  most  fundamental,  goes  beyond  experience  when  re- 
garded as  a  guide  to  our  actions.  A  burnt  child  dreads  the  fire, 
because  it  believes  that  the  fire  will  burn  it  to-day  just  as  it  did 
yesterday ;  but  this  belief  goes  beyond  experience,  and  assumes 
that  the  unknown  fire  of  to-day  is  like  the  known  fire  of  yesterday. 
Even  the  belief  that  the  child  was  burnt  yesterday  goes  beyond 
present  experience,  which  contains  only  the  memory  of  a  burning, 
and  not  the  burning  itself;  it  assumes,  therefore,  that  this 
memory  is  trustworthy,  although  we  know  that  a  memory  may 
often  be  mistaken.  But  if  it  is  to  be  used  as  a  guide  of  action 
as  a  hint  of  what  the  future  is  to  be,  it  must  assume  something 
about  that  future,  namely,  that  it  will  be  consistent  with  the 
supposition  that  the  burning  really  took  place  yesterday ;  which 
is  going  beyond  experience.  Even  the  fundamental  "I  am," 
which  cannot  be  doubted,  is  no  guide  to  action  until  it  takes  to 


THE  ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  69 

itself  "  I  shall  be,"  which  goes  beyond  experience.  The  question 
is  not,  therefore, "  May  we  believe  what  goes  beyond  experience  ?  " 
for  this  is  involved  in  the  very  nature  of  belief;  but  "How  far 
and  in  what  manner  may  we  add  to  our  experience  in  forming 
our  beliefs  ?  " 

And  an  answer,  of  utter  simplicity  and  universality,  is  sug- 
gested by  the  example  we  have  taken :  a  burnt  child  dreads  the 
fire.  We  may  go  beyond  experience  by  assuming  that  what  we 
do  not  know  is  Kke  what  we  do  know ;  or,  in  other  words,  we 
may  add  to  our  experience  on  the  assumption  of  a  uniformity  in 
nature.  What  this  uniformity  precisely  is,  how  we  grow  in  the 
knowledge  of  it  from  generation  to  generation,  these  are  ques- 
tions which  for  the  present  we  lay  aside,  being  content  to  examine 
two  instances  which  may  serve  to  make  plainer  the  nature  of  the 
rule. 

From  certain  observations  made  with  the  spectroscope,  we 
infer  the  existence  of  hydrogen  in  the  sun.  By  looking  into  the 
spectroscope  when  the  sun  is  shining  on  its  slit,  we  see  certain 
definite  bright  lines ;  and  experiments  made  upon  bodies  on  the 
earth  have  taught  us  that  when  these  bright  lines  are  seen,  hy- 
drogen is  the  source  of  them.  We  assume,  then,  that  the  un- 
known bright  Hues  in  the  sun  are  like  the  known  bright  lines  of 
the  laboratory,  and  that  hydrogen  in  the  sun  behaves  as  hydro- 
gen under  similar  circumstances  would  behave  on  the  earth. 

But  are  we  not  trusting  our  spectroscope  too  much  ?  Surely, 
having  found  it  to  be  trustworthy  for  terrestrial  substances, 
!  where  its  statements  can  be  verified  by  man,  we  are  justified  in 
accepting  its  testimony  in  other  like  cases;  but  not  when  it 
gives  us  information  about  things  in  the  sun,  where  its  testimony 
cannot  be  directly  verified  by  man  ? 

Certainly,  we  want  to  know  a  little  more  before  this  inference 
can  be  justified ;  and  fortunately  we  do  know  this.  The  spec- 
troscope testifies  to  exactly  the  same  thing  in  the  two  cases ; 
i  namely,  that  light  vibrations  of  a  certain  rate  are  being  sent 
through  it.  Its  construction  is  such  that  if  it  were  wrong  about 
this  in  one  case  it  would  be  wrong  in  the  other.     When  we  come 


70  WILLIAM   KINGDON   CLIFFORD 

to  look  into  the  matter,  we  find  that  we  have  really  assumed  the 
matter  of  the  sun  to  be  like  the  matter  of  the  earth,  made  up  of 
a  certain  number  of  distinct  substances ;  and  that  each  of  these, 
when  very  hot,  has  a  distinct  rate  of  vibration,  by  which  it  may 
be  recognized  and  singled  out  from  the  rest.  But  this  is  the 
kind  of  assumption  which  we  are  justified  in  using  when  we  add 
to  our  experience.  It  is  an  assumption  of  uniformity  in  nature, 
and  can  only  be  checked  by  comparison  with  many  similar  as- 
sumptions which  we  have  to  make  in  other  such  cases. 

But  is  this  a  true  belief,  of  the  existence  of  hydrogen  in  the 
sun  ?     Can  it  help  in  the  right  guidance  of  human  action  ? 

Certainly  not,  if  it  is  accepted  on  unworthy  grounds,  and  with- 
out some  understanding  of  the  process  by  which  it  is  got  at. 
But  when  this  process  is  taken  in  as  the  ground  of  the  belief,  it 
becomes  a  very  serious  and  practical  matter.  For  if  there  is  no 
hydrogen  in  the  sun,  the  spectroscope  —  that  is  to  say,  the  meas- 
urement of  rates  of  vibration  —  must  be  an  uncertain  guide  in 
recognizing  different  substances ;  and  consequently  it  ought  not 
to  be  used  in  chemical  analysis  —  in  assaying,  for  example  —  to 
the  great  saving  of  time,  trouble,  and  money.  Whereas  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  spectroscopic  method  as  trustworthy  has  en- 
riched us  not  only  with  new  metals,  which  is  a  great  thing,  but 
with  new  processes  of  investigation,  which  is  vastly  greater. 

For  another  example,  let  us  consider  the  way  in  which  we  infer 
the  truth  of  an  historical  event  —  say  the  siege  of  Syracuse  in 
the  Peloponnesian  war.  Our  experience  is  that  manuscripts 
exist  which  are  said  to  be  and  which  call  themselves  manuscripts 
of  the  history  of  Thucydides ;  that  in  other  manuscripts,  stated 
to  be  by  later  historians,  he  is  described  as  living  during  the  time 
of  the  war ;  and  that  books,  supposed  to  date  from  the  revival 
of  learning,  tell  us  how  these  manuscripts  had  been  preserved 
and  were  then  acquired.  We  find  also  that  men  do  not,  as  a  rule, 
forge  books  and  histories  without  a  special  motive ;  we  assume 
that  in  this  respect  men  in  the  past  were  like  men  in  the  present ; 
and  we  observe  that  in  this  case  no  special  motive  was  present. 
That  is,  we  add  to  our  experience  on  the  assumption  of  a  uniform- 


THE   ETHICS   OF   BELIEF  71 

ity  in  the  characters  of  men.  Because  our  knowledge  of  this 
uniformity  is  far  less  complete  and  exact  than  our  knowledge 
of  that  which  obtains  in  physics,  inferences  of  the  historical 
kind  are  more  precarious  and  less  exact  than  inferences  in  many 
other  sciences. 

But  if  there  is  any  special  reason  to  suspect  the  character  of 
the  persons  who  wrote  or  transmitted  certain  books,  the  case  be- 
comes altered.  If  a  group  of  documents  give  internal  evidence 
that  they  were  produced  among  people  who  forged  books  in  the 
names  of  others,  and  who,  in  describing  events,  suppressed 
those  things  which  did  not  suit  them,  while  they  amplified  such 
as  did  suit  them;  who  not  only  committed  these  crimes,  but 
gloried  in  them  as  proofs  of  humility  and  zeal ;  then  we  must 
say  that  upon  such  documents  no  true  historical  inference  can 
be  founded,  but  only  unsatisfactory  conjecture. 

We  may,  then,  add  to  our  experience  on  the  assumption  of  a 
uniformity  in  nature ;  we  may  fill  in  our  picture  of  what  is  and 
has  been,  as  experience  gives  it  to  us,  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
the  whole  consistent  with  this  uniformity.  And  practically  de- 
monstrative inference  —  that  which  gives  us  a  right  to  believe 
in  the  result  of  it  —  is  a  clear  showing  that  in  no  other  way  than 
by  the  truth  of  this  result  can  the  uniformity  of  nature  be  saved. 

No  evidence,  therefore,  can  justify  us  in  believing  the  truth 
of  a  statement  which  is  contrary  to,  or  outside  of,  the  uniformity 
of  nature.  If  our  experience  is  such  that  it  cannot  be  filled  up 
consistently  with  uniformity,  all  we  have  a  right  to  conclude  is 
that  there  is  something  wrong  somewhere;  but  the  possibility 
of  inference  is  taken  away ;  we  must  rest  in  our  experience,  and 
not  go  beyond  it  at  all.  If  an  event  really  happened,  which  was 
not  a  part  of  the  uniformity  of  nature,  it  would  have  two  proper- 
ties ;  no  evidence  could  give  the  right  to  believe  it  to  any  except 
those  whose  actual  experience  it  was ;  and  no  inference  worthy 
of  belief  could  be  founded  upon  it  at  all. 

Are  we  then  bound  to  beheve  that  nature  is  absolutely  and 
universally  uniform  ?  Certainly  not ;  we  have  no  right  to  be- 
lieve anything  of  this  kind.     The  rule  only  tells  us  that  in  form- 


72  WILLIAM   KINGDOM   CLIFFORD 

ing  beliefs  which  go  beyond  our  experience,  we  may  make  the 
assumption  that  nature  is  practically  uniform  so  far  as  we  are 
concerned.  Within  the  range  of  human  action  and  verification, 
we  may  form,  by  help  of  this  assumption,  actual  beliefs ;  be-' 
yond  it,  only  those  hypotheses  which  serve  for  the  more  accurate 
asking  of  questions. 

To  sum  up  :  — 

We  may  believe  what  goes  beyond  our  experience,  only  when 
it  is  inferred  from  that  experience  by  the  assumption  that  what 
we  do  not  know  is  like  what  we  know. 

We  may  believe  the  statement  of  another  person,  when  there 
is  reasonable  ground  for  supposing  that  he  knows  the  matter  of 
which  he  speaks,  and  that  he  is  speaking  the  truth  so  far  as  he 
knows  it. 

It  is  wrong  in  all  cases  to  believe  on  insufficient  evidence ;  and 
where  it  is  presumption  to  doubt  and  to  investigate,  there  it  is 
worse  than  presumption  to  believe. 


IV 

THE   WILL   TO    BELIEVE i 

William   James 

[William  James  (1842-1910),  brother  of  the  novelist,  Henry  James,  is 
recognized  as  one  of  the  ablest  psychologists  and  philosophers  America  has 
produced.  After  studying  medicine  at  Harvard,  he  began,  in  1872,  his  life- 
long connection  with  that  institution,  occupying  in  turn  chairs  in  physiology, 
psychology,  and  philosophy.  His  published  work  in  these  fields  of  knowledge 
has  placed  him  among  the  foremost  thinkers  of  our  time. 

The  following  essay  on  The  Will  to  Believe  illustrates  James's  attitude 
toward  religious  faith,  his  reasonableness  and  ingenuity  in  argument,  and 
his  unconventionality  and  charm  of  style.  As  the  champion  of  "the  right 
to  adopt  a  believing  attitude  in  religious  matters  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
our  merely  logical  intellect  may  not  have  been  coerced,"  James  takes 
issue  flatly  with  the  position  of  Clifford  in  the  foregoing  selection.  His 
thesis  is  not  that  we  have  a  right  to  believe  anything  we  like,  but 
that  in  the  final  problems  of  life,  when  presented  with  two  alternatives, 
neither  of  which  is  capable  of  proof  or  disproof,  it  is  more  rational  for  us  to 
choose  the  one  which  is  in  accord  with  our  hopes  rather  than  our  fears. 

This  essay  was  delivered  as  an  address  to  the  Philosophical  Clubs  of  Yale 
and  Brown  Universities,  in  April  and  May,  1896,  and  first  printed  in  the 
New  World  for  June  of  that  year.  Its  argument,  although  universally 
commended  for  its  brilliancy,  occasioned  many  rejoinders,  among  them : 
E.  Stettheimer's  The  Will  to  Believe  as  a  Basis  for  the  Defense  of  Religious 
Faith  (tr.  1907),  Dickinson  S.  Miller's  The  Will  to  Believe  and  the  Duty  to 
Doubt  {InternalionalJournal  of  Ethics,  January,  1899),  and  Vernon  Lee's  The 
Need  to  Believe  (Fortnightly  Review,  November,  1899).] 

In  the  recently  published  Life  by  Leslie  Stephen  of  his  brother, 
Fitz- James,  there  is  an  account  of  a  school  to  which  the  latter 
went  when  he  was  a  boy.     The  teacher,  a  certain  Mr.  Guest,  used 

^  Reprinted  by  permission  from  The  Will  to  Believe  and  other  Essays  in 
Popular  Philosophy  by  William  James  (Longmans,  Green,  &  Co.). 

73 


74  WILLIAM  JAMES 

to  converse  with  his  pupils  in  this  wise :  "  Gurney,  what  is  the  dif- 
ference  between  justification  and  sanctification  ?  —  Stephen, 
prove  the  omnipotence  of  God  !"  etc.  In  the  midst  of  our  Har- 
vard freethinking  and  indifference  we  are  prone  to  imagine  that 
here  at  your  good  old  orthodox  College  conversation  continues 
to  be  somewhat  upon  this  order;  and  to  show  you  that  we  at 
Harvard  have  not  lost  all  interest  in  these  vital  subjects,  I  have 
brought  with  me  to-night  something  like  a  sermon  on  justifi- 
cation by  faith  to  read  to  you,  —  I  mean  an  essay  in  justifica- 
tion of  faith,  a  defense  of  our  right  to  adopt  a  believing  attitude 
in  religious  matters,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  our  merely  logical 
intellect  may  not  have  been  coerced.  The  Will  to  Believe,  ac- 
cordingly, is  the  title  of  my  paper. 

I  have  long  defended  to  my  own  students  the  lawfulness  of 
voluntarily  adopted  faith ;  but  as  soon  as  they  have  got  well  im- 
bued with  the  logical  spirit,  they  have  as  a  rule  refused  to  admit 
my  contention  to  be  lawful  philosophically,  even  though  in  point 
of  fact  they  were  personally  all  the  time  chock-full  of  some  faith 
or  other  themselves.  I  am  all  the  while,  however,  so  profoundly 
convinced  that  my  own  position  is  correct,  that  your  invitation 
has  seemed  to  me  a  good  occasion  to  make  my  statements  more 
clear.  Perhaps  your  minds  will  be  more  open  than  those  with 
which  I  have  hitherto  had  to  deal.  I  will  be  as  Httle  technical  as 
I  can,  though  I  must  begin  by  setting  up  some  technical  distinc- 
tions that  will  help  us  in  the  end. 


Let  us  give  the  name  of  hypothesis  to  anything  that  may  be 
proposed  to  our  belief ;  and  just  as  the  electricians  speak  of  live 
and  dead  wires,  let  us  speak  of  any  hypothesis  as  either  live  or 
dead.  A  live  hypothesis  is  one  which  appeals  as  a  real  possibility 
to  him  to  whom  it  is  proposed.  If  I  ask  you  to  believe  in  the 
Mahdi,  the  notion  makes  no  electric  connection  with  your  na- 
ture, —  it  refuses  to  scintillate  with  any  credibility  at  all.  As  an 
hypothesis  it  is  completely  dead.  To  an  Arab,  however  (even 
if  he  be  not  one  of  the  Mahdi 's  followers),  the  hypothesis  is 


THE   WILL  TO   BELIEVE  75 

among  the  mind's  possibilities :  it  is  alive.  This  shows  that 
deadness  and  liveness  in  an  hypothesis  are  not  intrinsic  proper- 
ties, but  relations  to  the  individual  thinker.  They  are  meas- 
ured by  his  willingness  to  act.  The  maximum  of  liveness  in  an 
hypothesis  means  willingness  to  act  irrevocably.  Practically, 
that  means  belief ;  but  there  is  some  believing  tendency  wherever 
there  is  willingness  to  act  at  all. 

Next,  let  us  call  the  decision  between  two  hypotheses  an  op- 
tion. Options  may  be  of  several  kinds.  They  may  be  :  i,  liv- 
ing or  dead;  2^  forced  or  avoidable;  3,  momentous  or  trivial;  and 
for  our  purposes  we  may  call  an  option  a  genuine  option  when  it 
is  of  the  forced,  living,  and  momentous  kind. 

1.  A  living  option  is  one  in  which  both  hypotheses  are  live 
ones.  If  I  say  to  you:  "Be  a  theosophist  or  be  a  Moham- 
medan," it  is  probably  a  dead  option,  because  for  you  neither 
hypothesis  is  likely  to  be  alive.  But  if  I  say :  "Be  an  agnostic 
or  be  a  Christian,"  it  is  otherwise :  trained  as  you  are,  each 
hypothesis  makes  some  appeal,  however  small,  to  your  belief. 

2.  Next,  if  I  say  to  you:  "Choose  between  going  out  with 
your  umbrella  or  without  it,"  I  do  not  offer  you  a  genuine  option, 
for  it  is  not  forced.  You  can  easily  avoid  it  by  not  going  out  at 
all.  Similarly,  if  I  say,  "Either  love  me  or  hate  me,"  "Either 
call  my  theory  true  or  call  it  false,"  your  option  is  avoidable. 
You  may  remain  indifferent  to  me,  neither  loving  nor  hating,  and 
you  may  decline  to  offer  any  judgment  as  to  my  theory.  But 
if  I  say,  "Either  accept  this  truth  or  go  without  it,"  I  put  on 
you  a  forced  option,  for  there  is  no  standing  place  outside  of  the 
alternative.  Every  dilemma  based  on  a  complete  logical  dis- 
junction, with  no  possibility  of  not  choosing,  is  an  option  of  this 
forced  kind. 

3.  Finally,  if  I  were  Dr.  Nansen  and  proposed  to  you  to  join 
my  North  Pole  expedition,  your  option  would  be  momentous; 
for  this  would  probably  be  your  only  similar  opportunity,  and 
your  choice  now  would  either  exclude  you  from  the  North  Pole 
sort  of  immortaUty  altogether  or  put  at  least  the  chance  of  it 
into  your  hands.     He  who  refuses  to  embrace  a  unique  oppor- 


76  WILLIAM  JAMES 

tunity  loses  the  prize  as  surely  as  if  he  tried  and  failed.  Per 
contra,  the  option  is  trivial  when  the  opportunity  is  not  unique, 
when  the  stake  is  insignificant,  or  when  the  decision  is  revers- 
ible if  it  later  prove  unwise.  Such  trivial  options  abound  in 
the  scientific  life.  A  chemist  finds  an  hypothesis  live  enough 
to  spend  a  year  in  its  verification :  he  beheves  in  it  to  that  ex 
tent.  But  if  his  experiments  prove  inconclusive  either  way,  he 
is  quit  for  his  loss  of  time,  no  vital  harm  being  done. 

It  will  facilitate  our  discussion  if  we  keep  all  these  distinctions 

well  in  mind. 

n 

The  next  matter  to  consider  is  the  actual  psychology  of  hu- 
man opinion.  When  we  look  at  certain  facts,  it  seems  as  if  our 
passional  and  volitional  nature  lay  at  the  root  of  all  our  con- 
victions. When  we  look  at  others,  it  seems  as  if  they  could  do 
nothing  when  the  intellect  had  once  said  its  say.  Let  us  take 
the  latter  facts  up  first. 

Does  it  not  seem  preposterous  on  the  very  face  of  it  to  talk 
of  our  opinions  being  modifiable  at  will  ?  Can  our  will  either 
help  or  hinder  our  intellect  in  its  perceptions  of  truth  ?  Can  we, 
by  just  willing  it,  believe  that  Abraham  Lincoln's  existence  is  a 
myth,  and  that  the  portraits  of  him  in  McClure's  Magazine  are 
all  of  some  one  else  ?  Can  we,  by  any  effort  of  our  will,  or  by 
any  strength  of  wish  that  it  were  true,  believe  ourselves  well 
and  about  when  we  are  roaring  with  rheumatism  in  bed,  or  feel 
certain  that  the  sum  of  the  two  one-dollar  bills  in  our  pocket 
must  be  a  hundred  dollars?  We  can  say  any  of  these  things, 
but  we  are  absolutely  impotent  to  believe  them;  and  of  just 
such  things  is  the  whole  fabric  of  the  truths  that  we  do  believe 
in  made  up,  —  matters  of  fact,  immediate  or  remote,  as  Hume 
said,  and  relations  between  ideas,  which  are  either  there  or  not 
there  for  us  if  we  see  them  so,  and  which  if  not  there  cannot  be 
put  there  by  any  action  of  our  own. 

In  Pascal's  Thoughts  there  is  a  celebrated  passage  known  in 
literature  as  Pascal's  wager.  In  it  he  tries  to  force  us  into 
Christianity  by  reasoning  as  if  our  concern  with  truth  resembled 


THE  WILL  TO   BELIEVE  77 

our  concern  with  the  stakes  in  a  game  of  chance.  Translated 
freely,  his  words  are  these :  You  must  either  believe  or  not  be- 
lieve that  God  is  —  which  will  you  do  ?  Your  human  reason 
cannot  say.  A  game  is  going  on  between  you  and  the  nature  of 
things  which  at  the  day  of  judgment  will  bring  out  either  heads 
or  tails.  Weigh  what  your  gains  and  your  losses  would  be  if 
you  should  stake  all  you  have  on  heads,  or  God's  existence :  if 
you  win  in  such  case,  you  gain  eternal  beatitude ;  if  you 
lose,  you  lose  nothing  at  all.  If  there  were  an  infinity  of 
chances,  and  only  one  for  God  in  this  wager,  still  you  ought  to 
stake  your  all  on  God ;  for  though  you  surely  risk  a  finite  loss 
by  this  procedure,  any  finite  loss  is  reasonable,  even  a  certain 
one  is  reasonable,  if  there  is  but  the  possibility  of  infinite  gain. 
Go,  then,  and  take  holy  water,  and  have  masses  said;  belief 
will  come  and  stupefy  your  scruples,  —  Cela  vous  fera  croire  et 
vous  abetira.  Why  should  you  not?  At  bottom,  what  have 
you  to  lose  ? 

You  probably  feel  that  when  religious  faith  expresses  itself 
thus,  in  the  language  of  the  gaming-table,  it  is  put  to  its  last 
trumps.  Surely  Pascal's  own  personal  belief  in  masses  and  holy 
water  had  far  other  springs ;  and  this  celebrated  page  of  his  is 
but  an  argument  for  others,  a  last  desperate  snatch  at  a  weapon 
against  the  hardness  of  the  unbelieving  heart.  We  feel  that  a 
faith  in  masses  and  holy  water  adopted  willfully  after  such  a 
mechanical  calculation  would  lack  the  inner  soul  of  faith's 
reality ;  and  if  we  were  ourselves  in  the  place  of  the  Deity,  we 
should  probably  take  particular  pleasure  in  cutting  off  believers 
of  this  pattern  from  their  infinite  reward.  It  is  evident  that 
unless  there  be  some  preexisting  tendency  to  believe  in  masses 
and  holy  water,  the  option  offered  to  the  will  by  Pascal  is  not  a 
living  option.  Certainly  no  Turk  ever  took  to  masses  and  holy 
water  on  its  account ;  and  even  to  us  Protestants  these  means  of 
salvation  seem  such  foregone  impossibilities  that  Pascal's  logic, 
invoked  for  them  specifically,  leaves  us  unmoved.  As  well 
might  the  Mahdi  write  to  us,  saying,  "I  am  the. Expected  One 
whom  God  has  created  in  his  effulgence.     You  shall  be  infinitely 


78  WILLIAM  JAMES 

happy  if  you  confess  me;  otherwise  you  shall  be  cut  off  from 
the  light  of  the  sun.  Weigh,  then,  your  infinite  gain  if  I  am 
genuine  against  your  finite  sacrifice  if  I  am  not!"  His  logic 
would  be  that  of  Pascal ;  but  he  would  vainly  use  it  on  us,  for 
the  hypothesis  he  offers  us  is  dead.  No  tendency  to  act  on  it 
exists  in  us  to  any  degree. 

The  talk  of  believing  by  our  volition  seems,  then,  from  one 
point  of  view,  simply  silly.  From  another  point  of  view  it  is 
worse  than  silly;  it  is  vile.  When  one  turns  to  the  magnificent 
edifice  of  the  physical  sciences,  and  sees  how^  it  was  reared ;  what 
thousands  of  disinterested  moral  lives  of  men  lie  buried  in  its 
mere  foundations;  what  patience  and  postponement,  what 
choking  down  of  preference,  what  submission  to  the  icy  laws  of 
outer  fact  are  wrought  into  its  very  stones  and  mortar;  how 
absolutely  impersonal  it  stands  in  its  vast  augustness,  —  then 
how  besotted  and  contemptible  seems  every  little  sentimentalist 
who  comes  blowing  his  voluntary  smoke  wreaths,  and  pretend- 
ing to  decide  things  from  out  of  his  private  dream  !  Can  we 
wonder  if  those  bred  in  the  rugged  and  manly  school  of  science 
should  feel  like  spewing  such  subjectivism  out  of  their  mouths  ? 
The  whole  system  of  loyalties  which  grow  up  in  the  schools  of 
science  go  dead  against  its  toleration ;  so  that  it  is  only  natural 
that  those  who  have  caught  the  scientific  fever  should  pass  over 
to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  write  sometimes  as  if  the  incor- 
ruptibly  truthful  intellect  ought  positively  to  prefer  bitterness 
and  unacceptableness  to  the  heart  in  its  cup. 

It  fortifies  my  soul  to  know 

That,  though  I  perish,  Truth  is  so  — 

sings  Clough,  while  Huxley  exclaims:  "My  only  consolation 
lies  in  the  reflection  that,  however  bad  our  posterity  may  be- 
come, so  far  as  they  hold  by  the  plain  rule  of  not  pretending 
to  believe  what  they  have  no  reason  to  believe,  because  it  may 
be  to  their  advantage  so  to  pretend  [the  word  '  pretend '  is  surely 
here  redundant],  they  will  not  have  reached  the  lowest  depth  of 
immorality."     And  that  deUcious  enfant  terrible  Clifford  writes; 


THE   WILL   TO  BELIEVE  79 

"Belief  is  desecrated  when  given  to  unproved  and  unquestioned 
statements  for  the  solace  and  private  pleasure  of  the  believer. 
.  .  .  Whoso  would  deserve  well  of  his  fellows  in  this  matter 
will  guard  the  purity  of  his  belief  with  a  very  fanaticism  of 
jealous  care,  lest  at  any  time  it  should  rest  on  an  unworthy  ob- 
ject, and  catch  a  stain  which  can  never  be  wiped  away.  ...  If 
[a]  belief  has  been  accepted  on  insufficient  evidence  [even  though 
the  belief  be  true,  as  Clifford  on  the  same  page  explains]  the 
pleasure  is  a  stolen  one.  ...  It  is  sinful  because  it  is  stolen  in 
defiance  of  our  duty  to  mankind.  That  duty  is  to  guard  our- 
selves from  such  beliefs  as  from  a  pestilence  which  may  shortly 
master  our  own  body  and  then  spread  to  the  rest  of  the  town. 
...  It  is  wrong  always,  everywhere,  and  for  every  one,  to  be- 
lieve anything  upon  insufiicient  evidence." 

m 

All  this  strikes  one  as  healthy,  even  when  expressed,  as  by 
Clifford,  with  somewhat  too  much  of  robustious  pathos  in  the 
voice.  Free  will  and  simple  wishing  do  seem,  in  the  matter  of 
our  credences,  to  be  only  fifth  wheels  to  the  coach.  Yet  if  any 
one  should  thereupon  assume  that  intellectual  insight  is  what 
remains  after  wish  and  will  and  sentimental  preference  have 
taken  wing,  or  that  pure  reason  is  what  then  settles  our  opinions, 
he  would  fly  quite  as  directly  in  the  teeth  of  the  facts. 

It  is  only  our  already  dead  hypotheses  that  our  willing  na- 
ture is  unable  to  bring  to  life  again.  But  what  has  made  them 
dead  for  us  is  for  the  most  part  a  previous  action  of  our  willing 
nature  of  an  antagonistic  kind.  When  I  say  "  wiUing  nature," 
I  do  not  mean  only  such  deliberate  volitions  as  may  have  set 
up  habits  of  belief  that  we  cannot  now  escape  from,  —  I  mean 
all  such  factors  of  belief  as  fear  and  hope,  prejudice  and  passion, 
imitation  and  partisanship,  the  circumpressure  of  our  caste 
and  set.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  find  ourselves  believing,  we 
hardly  know  how  or  why.  Mr.  Balfour  gives  the  name  of 
"  authority  "  to  all  those  influences,  born  of  the  intellectual  cli- 
mate, that  make  hypotheses  possible  or  impossible  for  us,  alive 


8o  WILLIAM  JAMES 

or  dead.  Here  in  this  room,  we  all  of  us  believe  in  molecules 
and  the  conservation  of  energy,  in  democracy  and  necessary 
progress,  in  Protestant  Christianity  and  the  duty  of  fighting 
for  "  the  doctrine  of  the  immortal  Monroe,"  all  for  no  reasons 
worthy  of  the  name.  We  see  into  these  matters  with  no  more 
inner  clearness,  and  probably  with  much  less,  than  any  dis- 
believer in  them  might  possess.  His  unconventionality  would 
probably  have  some  grounds  to  show  for  its  conclusions;  but 
for  us,  not  insight,  but  the  prestige  of  the  opinions,  is  what 
makes  the  spark  shoot  from  them  and  light  up  our  sleeping 
magazines  of  faith.  Our  reason  is  quite  satisfied,  in  nine  hun- 
dred and  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  every  thousand  of  us,  if  it 
can  find  a  few  arguments  that  will  do  to  recite  in  case  our  credu- 
lity is  criticized  by  some  one  else.  Our  faith  is  faith  in  some  one 
else's  faith,  and  in  the  greatest  matters  this  is  most  the  case. 
Our  belief  in  truth  itself,  for  instance,  that  there  is  a  truth,  and 
that  our  minds  and  it  are  made  for  each  other,  —  what  is  it  but 
a  passionate  afiirmation  of  desire,  in  which  our  social  system 
backs  us  up  ?  We  want  to  have  a  truth ;  we  want  to  believe 
that  our  experiments  and  studies  and  discussions  must  put  us 
in  a  continually  better  and  better  position  towards  it ;  and  on 
this  line  we  agree  to  fight  out  our  thinking  lives.  But  if  a 
pyrrhonistic  skeptic  asks  us  how  we  know  all  this,  can  our  logic 
find  a  reply  ?  No  !  certainly  it  cannot.  It  is  just  one  volition 
against  another, —  we  willing  to  go  in  for  life  upon  a  trust  or 
assumption  which  he,  for  his  part,  does  not  care  to  make.^ 

As  a  rule  we  disbelieve  all  facts  and  theories  for  which  we 
have  no  use.  Clifford's  cosmic  emotions  find  no  use  for  Chris- 
tian feelings.  Huxley  belabors  the  bishops  because  there  is  no 
use  for  sacerdotalism  in  his  scheme  of  life.  Newman,  on  the 
contrary,  goes  over  to  Romanism,  and  finds  all  sorts  of  reasons 
good  for  staying  there,  because  a  priestly  system  is  for  him  ^n 
organic  need  and  delight.  Why  do  so  few  "  scientists  "  even 
look  at  the  evidence  for  telepathy,  so  called?     Because  they 

'  Compare  the  admirable  page  310  in  S.  H.  Hodgson's  Time  and  Space. 
London,  1865. 


THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE  81 

think,  as  a  leading  biologist,  now  dead,  once  said  to  me,  that 
even  if  such  a  thing  were  true,  scientists  ought  to  band  together 
to  keep  it  suppressed  and  concealed.  It  would  undo  the  uni- 
formity of  nature  and  all  sorts  of  other  things  without  which 
scientists  cannot  carry  on  their  pursuits.  But  if  this  very  man 
had  been  shown  something  which  as  a  scientist  he  might  do  with 
telepathy,  he  might  not  only  have  examined  the  evidence,  but 
even  have  found  it  good  enough.  This  very  law  which  the  logi- 
cians would  impose  upon  us  —  if  I  may  give  the  name  of  logi- 
cians to  those  who  would  rule  out  our  willing  nature  here  —  is 
based  on  nothing  but  their  own  natural  wish  to  exclude  all  ele- 
ments for  which  they,  in  their  professional  quality  of  logicians, 
can  find  no  use. 

Evidently,  then,  our  nonintellectual  nature  does  influence 
our  convictions.  There  are  passional  tendencies  and  volitions 
wKTch  run  before  and  others  which  come  after  belief,  and  it  is 
only  the  latter  that  are  too  late  for  the  fair ;  and  they  are  not 
too  late  when  the  previous  passional  work  has  been  already  in 
theii-own  directioji.  Pascal's  argument,  instead  of  being  power- 
less, then  seems  a  regular  clincher,  and  is  the  last  stroke  needed 
to  make  our  faith  in  masses  and  holy  water  complete.  The 
state  of  things  is  evidently  far  from  simple;  and  pure  insight 
and  logic,  whatever  they  might  do  ideally,  are  not  the  only 
things  that  really  do  produce  our  creeds. 

rv 

Our  next  duty,  having  recognized  this  mixed-up  state  of  af- 
fairs, is  to  ask  whether  it  be  simply  reprehensible  and  pathologi- 
cal, or  whether,  on  the  contrary,  we  must  treat  it  as  a  normal 
element  in  making  up  our  minds.  The  thesis  I  defend  is,  briefly 
stated,  this:  Our  passional  nature  not  only  lawfully  may,  hut 
must,  decide  an  option  between  propositions,  whenever  it  is  a 
genuine  option  that  cannot  by  its  nature  be  decided  on  intellectual 
grounds;  for  to  say,  under  such  circumstances,  "Do  not  decide, 
but  lea$B  the  question  open,"  is  itself  a  passional  decision,  — just 
like  deciding  yes  or  no,  —  and  is  attended  witJt  the  same  risk  of  los- 


82  WILLIAM  JAMES 

ing  the  truth.  The  thesis  thus  abstractly  expressed  will,  I  trust, 
soon  become  quite  clear.  But  I  must  first  indulge  in  a  bit  more 
of  preliminary  work. 


It  will  be  observed  that  for  the  purposes  of  this  discussion  we 
are  on  "  dogmatic  "  ground,  —  ground,  I  mean,  which  leaves 
systematic  philosophical  skepticism  altogether  out  of  account. 
The  postulate  that  there  is  truth,  and  that  it  is  the  destiny  of 
our  minds  to  attain  it,  we  are  deliberately  resolving  to  make, 
though  the  skeptic  will  not  make  it.  We  part  company  with 
him,  therefore,  absolutely,  at  this  point.  But  the  faith  that 
truth  exists,  and  that  our  minds  can  find  it,  may  be  held  in  two 
ways.  We  may  talk  of  the  empiricist  way  and  of  the  absolutist 
way  of  believing  in  truth.  The  absolutists  in  this  matter  say 
that  we  not  only  can  attain  to  knowing  truth,  but  we  can  know 
when  we  have  attained  to  knowing  it;  while  the  empiricists 
think  that  although  we  may  attain  it,  we  cannot  infallibly  know 
when.  To  know  is  one  thing,  and  to  know  for  certain  that  we 
know  is  another.  One  may  hold  to  the  first  being  possible  with- 
out the  second ;  hence  the  empiricists  and  the  absolutists,  al- 
though neither  of  them  is  a  skeptic  in  the  usual  philosophic  sense 
of  the  term,  show  very  different  degrees  of  dogmatism  in  their 
lives. 

If  we  look  at  the  history  of  opinions,  we  see  that  the  empiricist 
tendency  has  largely  prevailed  in  science,  while  in  philosophy 
the  absolutist  tendency  has  had  everything  its  own  way.  The 
characteristic  sort  of  happiness,  indeed,  which  philosophies 
yield  has  mainly  consisted  in  the  conviction  felt  by  each  suc- 
cessive school  or  system  that  by  it  bottom-certitude  had  been 
attained.  "Other  philosophies  are  collections  of  opinions, 
mostly  false ;  my  philosophy  gives  standing  ground  forever," 
—  who  does  not  recognize  in  this  the  keynote  of  every  systeni 
worthy  of  the  name  ?  A  system,  to  be  a  system  at  all,  must 
come  as  a  closed  system,  reversible  in  this  or  that  detail,  per- 
chance, but  in  its  essential  features  never  ! 


THE  WILL  TO  BELIEVE  83 

Scholastic  orthodoxy,  to  which  one  must  always  go  when  one 
wishes  to  find  perfectly  clear  statement,  has  beautifully  elabo- 
rated this  absolutist  conviction  in  a  doctrine  which  it  calls  that 
of  "  objective  evidence."     If,  for  example,  I  am  unable  to  doubt 
that  I  now  exist  before  you,  that  two  is  less  than  three,  or  that 
if  all  men  are  mortal,  then  I  am  mortal  too,  it  is  because  these 
things  illumine  my  intellect  irresistibly.     The  final  ground  of 
this  objective  evidence  possessed  by  certain  propositions  is  the 
adcBquatio  intellectHs  nostri  cum  re}     The  certitude  it  brings  in- 
volves an  aptitudinem  ad  extorquendum  certum  assensum  ^  on  the 
part  of  the  truth  envisaged,  and  on  the  side  of  the  subject  a 
quietem  in  cognitione^  when  once  the  object  is  mentally  received, 
that  leaves  no  possibility  of  doubt  behind;    and  in  the  whole 
transaction  nothing  operates  but  the  entitas  ipsa  *  of  the  object 
and  the  entitas  ipsa  of  the  mind.     We  slouchy  modern  thinkers 
dislike  to  talk  in  Latin,  —  indeed,  we  dislike  to  talk  in  set  terms 
at  all ;   but  at  bottom  our  own  state  of  mind  is  very  much  like 
this  whenever  we  uncritically  abandon  ourselves :  You  believe 
in  objective  evidence,  and  I  do.     Of  some  things  we  feel  that 
we  are  certain:    we  know,  and  we  know  that  we  do  know. 
There  is  something  that  gives  a  click  inside  of  us,  a  bell  that 
strikes  twelve,  when  the  hands  of  our  mental  clock  have  swept 
the  dial  and  meet  over  the   meridian  hour.     The  greatest  em- 
piricists among  us  are  only  empiricists  on  reflection :   when  left 
to  their  instincts,  they  dogmatize  like  infallible  popes.     When 
the  Cliffords  tell  us  how  sinful  it  is  to  be  Christians  on  such 
"  insufficient  evidence,"  insufficiency  is  really  the  last  thing  they 
have  in  mind.     For  them  the  evidence  is  absolutely  sufficient, 
only  it  makes  the  other  way.      They  believe  so  completely 
in  an   antichristian   order   of   the   universe   that   there  is  no 
living   option :     Christianity  is  a  dead   hypothesis   from  the 
start. 

*  A  correspondence  of  the  perception  with  the  object.  — Editors. 
2  Capability  of  compelling  unqualified  assent.  —  Editors. 

^  Assured  knowledge.  —  Editors. 

*  Actual  existence.  —  Editors. 


84  WILLIAM  JAMES 


VI 

But  now,  since  we  are  all  such  absolutists  by  instinct,  what 
in  our  quality  of  students  of  philosophy  ought  we  to  do  about 
the  fact  ?  Shall  we  espouse  and  indorse  it  ?  Or  shall  we  treat 
it  as  a  weakness  of  our  nature  from  which  we  must  free  our- 
selves, if  we  can  ? 

I  sincerely  believe  that  the  latter  course  is  the  only  one  we 
can  follow  as  reflective  men.  Objective  evidence  and  certitude 
are  doubtless  very  fine  ideals  to  play  with,  but  where  on  this 
moonlit  and  dream- visited  planet  are  they  found  ?  I  am,  there- 
fore, myself  a  complete  empiricist  so  far  as  my  theory  of  human 
knowledge  goes.  I  live,  to  be  sure,  by  the  practical  faith  that 
we  must  go  on  experiencing  and  thinking  over  our  experience, 
for  only  thus  can  omi  opinions  grow  more  true ;  but  to  hold  any 
one  of  them  —  I  absolutely  do  not  care  which  —  as  if  it  never 
could  be  reinterpretable  or  corrigible,  I  believe  to  be  a  tre- 
mendously mistaken  attitude,  and  I  think  that  the  whole 
history  of  philosophy  will  bear  me  out.  There  is  but  one  inde- 
fectibly  certain  truth,  and  that  is  the  truth  that  pyrrhonistic 
skepticism  itself  leaves  standing,  —  the  truth  that  the  present 
phenomenon  of  consciousness  exists.  That,  however,  is  the 
bare  starting  point  of  knowledge,  the  mere  admission  of  a  stuff 
to  be  philosophized  about.  The  various  philosophies  are  but  so 
many  attempts  at  expressing  what  this  stuff  really  is.  And  if 
we  repair  to  our  libraries  what  disagreement  do  we  discover ! 
Where  is  a  certainly  true  answer  found  ?  Apart  from  abstract 
propositions  of  comparison  (such  as  two  and  two  are  the  same 
as  four),  propositions  which  tell  us  nothing  by  themselves  about 
concrete  reality,  we  find  no  proposition  ever  regarded  by  any 
one  as  evidently  certain  that  has  not  either  been  called  a  false- 
hood, or  at  least  had  its  truth  sincerely  questioned  by  some  one 
else.  The  transcending  of  the  axioms  of  geometry,  not  in  play 
but  in  earnest,  by  certain  of  our  contemporaries  (as  ZoUner  and 
Charles  H.  Hinton),  and  the  rejection  of  the  whole  Aristotelian 
logic  by  the  Hegelians,  are  striking  instances  m  Doint- 


THE   WILL   TO   BELIEVE  85 

No  concrete  test  of  what  is  really  true  has  ever  been  agreed 
upon.  Some  make  the  criterion  external  to  the  moment  of  per- 
ception, putting  it  either  in  revelation,  the  consensus  gentium,'^ 
the  instincts  of  the  heart,  or  the  systematized  experience  of  the 
race.  Others  make  the  perceptive  moment  its  own  test,  —  Des- 
cartes, for  instance,  with  his  clear  and  distinct  ideas  guaranteed 
by  the  veracity  of  God  ;  Reid  with  his  "  common  sense  "  ;  and 
Kant  with  his  forms  of  synthetic  judgment  a  priori.  The  in- 
conceivability of  the  opposite;  the  capacity  to  be  verified  by 
sense ;  the  possession  of  complete  organic  unity  or  self-relation, 
realized  when  a  thing  is  its  own  other,  —  are  standards  which, 
in  turn,  have  been  used.  The  much  lauded  objective  evidence 
is  never  triumphantly  there ;  it  is  a  mere  aspiration  or  Grenz- 
begriff,  marking  the  infinitely  remote  ideal  of  our  thinking  life. 
To  claim  that  certain  truths  now  possess  it,  is  simply  to  say  that 
when  you  think  them  true  and  they  are  true,  then  their  evidence 
is  objective,  otherwise  it  is  not.  But  practically  one's  convic- 
tion that  the  evidence  one  goes  by  is  of  the  real  objective  brand 
is  only  one  more  subjective  opinion  added  to  the  lot.  For 
what  a  contradictory  array  of  opinions  have  objective  evidence 
and  absolute  certitude  been  claimed  !  The  world  is  rational 
through  and  through,  —  its  existence  is  an  ultimate  brute  fact ; 
there  is  a  personal  God,  —  a  personal  God  is  inconceivable ; 
there  is  an  extra-mental  physical  world  immediately  known,  — 
the  mind  can  only  know  its  own  ideas;  a  moral  imperative 
exists,  —  obligation  is  only  the  resultant  of  desires ;  a  permanent 
spiritual  principle  is  in  every  one,  —  there  are  only  shifting 
states  of  mind ;  there  is  an  endless  chain  of  causes,  —  there  is 
an  absolute  first  cause  ;  an  eternal  necessity,  —  a  freedom ;  a 
purpose,  —  no  purpose  ;  a  primal  One,  —  a  primal  Many ;  a 
universal  continuity,  —  an  essential  discontinuity  in  things ;  an 
infinity,  —  no  infinity.  There  is  this,  —  there  is  that ;  there 
is  indeed  nothing  which  some  one  has  not  thought  absolutely 
true,  while  his  neighbor  deemed  it  absolutely  false ;  and  not  an 
absolutist  among  them  seems  ever  to  have  considered  that  the 
1  Prevailing  opinioii  —  Editors. 


86  WILLIAM  JAMES 

trouble  may  all  the  time  be  essential,  and  that  the  intellect,  even 
with  truth  directly  in  its  grasp,  may  have  no  infallible  signal  for 
knowing  whether  it  be  truth  or  no.  When,  indeed,  one  remem- 
bers that  the  most  striking  practical  application  to  life  of  the 
doctrine  of  objective  certitude  has  been  the  conscientious  labors 
of  the  Holy  Office  of  the  Inquisition,  one  feels  less  tempted  than 
ever  to  lend  the  doctrine  a  respectful  ear. 

But  please  observe,  now,  that  when  as  empiricists  we  give 
up  the  doctrine  of  objective  certitude,  we  do  not  thereby  give 
up  the  quest  or  hope  of  truth  itself.  We  still  pin  our  faith  on 
its  existence,  and  still  believe  that  we  gain  an  ever  better  position 
towards  it  by  systematically  continuing  to  roll  up  experiences 
and  think.  Our  great  dilference  from  the  scholastic  lies  in  the 
way  we  face.  The  strength  of  his  system  lies  in  the  principles, 
the  origin,  the  terminus  a  quo  of  his  thought ;  for  us  the  strength 
is  in  the  outcome,  the  upshot,  the  terminus  ad  quern.  Not  where 
it  comes  from,  but  what  it  leads  to  is  to  decide.  It  matters  not 
to  an  empiricist  from  what  quarter  an  hypothesis  may  come  to 
him  :  he  may  have  acquired  it  by  fair  means  or  by  foul ;  passion 
may  have  whispered  or  accident  suggested  it ;  but  if  the  total 
drift  of  thinking  continues  to  confirm  it,  that  is  what  he  means 
by  its  being  true. 

vn 

One  more  point,  small  but  important,  and  our  preliminaries 
are  done.  There  are  two  ways  of  looking  at  our  duty  in  the 
matter  of  opinion,  —  ways  entirely  different,  and  yet  ways  about 
whose  difference  the  theory  of  knowledge  seems  hitherto  to  have 
shown  very  little  concern.  We  must  know  the  truth;  and  we 
must  avoid  error,  —  these  are  our  first  and  great  command- 
ments as  would-be  knowers ;  but  they  are  not  two  ways  of  stat- 
ing an  identical  commandment,  they  are  two  separable  laws. 
Although  it  may  indeed  happen  that  when  we  believe  the 
truth  A,  we  escape  as  an  incidental  consequence  from  believ- 
ing the  falsehood  B,  it  hardly  ever  happens  that  by  merely 
disbelieving  B  we  necessarily  believe  A .     We  may  in  escaping 


THE  WILL   TO   BELIEVE  87 

B  fall  into  believing  other  falsehoods,  C  or  D,  just  as  bad 
as  5 ;  or  we  may  escape  B  by  not  believing  anything  at  all, 
not  even  A. 

Believe  truth  !  Shun  error  !  —  these,  we  see,  are  two  ma- 
terially different  laws ;  and  by  choosing  between  them  we  may 
end,  coloring  differently  our  whole  intellectual  life.  We  may 
regard  the  chase  for  truth  as  paramount,  and  the  avoidance  of 
error  as  secondary ;  or  we  may,  on  the  other  hand,  treat  the 
avoidance  of  error  as  more  imperative,  and  let  truth  take  its 
chance.  Clifford,  in  the  instructive  passage  which  I  have 
quoted,  exhorts  us  to  the  latter  course.  Believe  nothing,  he 
tells  us;  keep  your  mind  in  suspense  forever,  rather  than  by  clos- 
ing it  on  insufficient  evidence  incur  the  awful  risk  of  believing 
lies.  You,  on  the  other  hand,  may  think  that  the  risk  of  being 
in  error  is  a  very  small  matter  when  compared  with  the  bless- 
ings of  real  knowledge,  and  be  ready  to  be  duped  many  times 
in  your  investigation  rather  than  postpone  indefinitely  the 
chance  of  guessing  true.  I  myself  find  it  impossible  to  go  with 
Clifford.  We  must  remember  that  these  feelings  of  our  duty 
about  either  truth  or  error  are  in  any  case  only  expressions  of 
our  passional  life.  Biologically  considered,  our  minds  are  as 
ready  to  grind  out  falsehood  as  veracity,  and  he  who  says, 
"Better  go  without  belief  forever  than  believe  a  lie!"  merely 
shows  his  own  preponderant  private  horror  of  becoming  a  dupe. 
He  may  be  critical  of  many  of  his  desires  and  fears,  but  this 
fear  he  slavishly  obeys.  He  cannot  imagine  any  one  ques- 
tioning its  binding  force.  For  my  own  part,  I  have  also  a  horror 
of  being  duped ;  but  I  can  believe  that  worse  things  than  being 
duped  may  happen  to  a  man  in  this  world :  so  Clifford's  ex- 
hortation has  to  my  ears  a  thoroughly  fantastic  sound.  It  is 
like  a  general  informing  his  soldiers  that  it  is  better  to  keep  out 
of  battle  forever  than  to  risk  a  single  wound.  Not  so  are  vic- 
tories either  over  enemies  or  over  nature  gained.  Our  errors 
are  surely  not  such  awfully  solemn  things.  In  a  world  where 
we  are  so  certain  to  incur  them  in  spite  of  all  our  caution,  a 
certain  lightness  of   heart  seems  healthier    than  this  excessive 


88  WILLIAM  JAMES 

nervousness  on  their  behalf.     At  any  rate,  it  seems  the  fittest 
thing  for  the  empiricist  philosopher. 

VIII 

And  now,  after  all  this  introduction,  let  us  go  straight  at  our 
question.  I  have  said,  and  now  repeat  it,  that  not  only  as  a 
matter  of  fact  do  we  find  our  passional  nature  influencing  us  in 
our  opinions,  but  that  there  are  some  options  between  opinions 
in  which  this  influence  must  be  regarded  both  as  an  inevitable 
and  as  a  lawful  determinant  of  our  choice. 

I  fear  here  that  some  of  you,  my  hearers,  will  begin  to  scent 
danger,  and  lend  an  inhospitable  ear.  Two  first  steps  of  passion 
you  have  indeed  had  to  admit  as  necessary,  —  we  must  think 
so  as  to  avoid  dupery,  and  we  must  think  so  as  to  gain  truth ; 
but  the  surest  path  to  those  ideal  consummations,  you  will 
probably  consider,  is  from  now  onwards  to  take  no  further  pas- 
sional step. 

Well,  of  course,  I  agree  as  far  as  the  facts  will  allow.     Wher- 
ever the  option  between  losing  truth  and  gaining  it  is  not  mo- 
mentous, we  can  throw  the  chance  of  gaining  truth  away,  and 
at  any  rate  save  ourselves  from  any  chance  of  believing  falsehood, 
by  not  making  up  our  minds  at  all  till  objective  evidence  has 
come.     In  scientific  questions,  this  is  almost  always  the  case; 
and  even  in  human  affairs  in  general,  the  need  of  acting  is  sel- 
dom so  urgent  that  a  false  belief  to  act  on  is  better  than  no  belief 
at  all.     Law  courts,  indeed,  have  to  decide  on  the  best  evidence 
attainable  for  thfe  moment,  because  a  judge's  duty  is  to  make  law 
as  well  as  to  ascertain  it,  and  (as  a  learned  judge  once  said  to 
me)  few  cases  are  worth  spending  much  time  over :    the  great 
thing  is  to  have  them  decided  on  any  acceptable  principle,  and 
got  out  of  the  way.     But  in  our  dealings  with  objective  nature 
we  obviously  are  recorders,  not  makers,  of  the  truth ;   and  de- 
cisions for  the  mere  sake  of  deciding  promptly  and  getting  on 
to  the  next  business  would  be  wholly  out  of  place.     Throughout 
the  breadth  of  physical  nature  facts  are  what  they  are  quite 
independently  of  us,  and  seldom  is  there  any  such  hurry  about 


THE    vViLL   TO   BELIEVE  89 

them  that  the  risks  of  being  duped  by  believing  a  premature 
theory  need  be  faced.  The  questions  here  are  always  trivial 
options,  the  hypotheses  are  hardly  hving  (at  any  rate  not  living 
for  us  spectators),  the  choice  between  believing  truth  or  false- 
hood is  seldom  forced.  The  attitude  of  skeptical  balance  is  there- 
fore the  absolutely  wise  one  if  we  would  escape  mistakes.  What 
difference,  indeed,  does  it  make  to  most  of  us  whether  we  have 
or  have  not  a  theory  of  the  Rontgen  rays,  whether  we  beheve 
or  not  in  mind  stuff,  or  have  a  conviction  about  the  causality 
of  conscious  states?  It  makes  no  difference.  Such  options 
are  not  forced  on  us.  On  every  account  it  is  better  not  to  make 
them,  but  still  keep  weighing  reasons  pro  et  contra  with  an  indif- 
ferent hand. 

I  speak,  of  course,  here  of  the  purely  judging  mind.  For  pur- 
poses of  discovery  such  indifference  is  to  be  less  highly  recom- 
mended, and  science  would  be  far  less  advanced  than  she  is  if 
the  passionate  desires  of  individuals  to  get  their  own  faiths  con- 
firmed had  been  kept  out  of  the  game.  See,  for  example,  the 
sagacity  which  Spencer  and  Weismann  now  display.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  you  want  an  absolute  duffer  in  an  investigation, 
you  must,  after  all,  take  the  man  who  has  no  interest  whatever 
in  its  results :  he  is  the  warranted  incapable,  the  positive  fool. 
The  most  useful  investigator,  because  the  most  sensitive  ob- 
server, is  always  he  whose  eager  interest  in  one  side  of  the  ques- 
tion is  balanced  by  an  equally  keen  nervousness  lest  he  become 
deceived.^  Science  has  organized  this  nervousness  into  a  regu- 
lar technique,  her  so-called  method  of  verification ;  and  she  has 
fallen  so  deeply  in  love  with  the  method  that  one  may  even  say 
she  has  ceased  to  care  for  truth  by  itself  at  all.  It  is  only  truth 
as  technically  verified  that  interests  her.  The  truth  of  truths 
might  come  in  merely  afiirmative  form,  and  she  would  decline 
to  touch  it.  Such  truth  as  that,  she  might  repeat  with  Clifford, 
would  be  stolen  in  defiance  of  her  duty  to  mankind.  Human 
passions,  however,  are  stronger  than  technical  rules.     "Le  coeur 

1  Compare  Wilfrid  Ward's  Essay,  "The  Wish  to  Beheve,"  in  his  Witnesses 
to  the  Unseen  (Macmillan  &  Co.,  1893). 


90  WILLIAM  JAMES 

a  ses  raisons,"  as  Pascal  says,  "que  la  raison  ne  connai  pas;  "' 
and  however  indifferent  to  all  but  the  bare  rules  of  the  game  the 
umpire,  the  abstract  intellect,  may  be,  the  concrete  players 
who  furnish  him  the  materials  to  judge  of  are  usually,  each  one 
of  them,  in  love  with  some  pet  "  live  hypothesis  "  of  his  own. 
Let  us  agree,  however,  that  wherever  there  is  no  forced  option, 
the  dispassionately  judicial  intellect  with  no  pet  hypothesis, 
saving  us,  as  it  does,  from  dupery  at  any  rate,  ought  to  be  our 
ideal. 

The  question  next  arises :  Are  there  not  somewhere  forced 
options  in  our  speculative  questions,  and  can  we  (as  men  who 
may  be  interested  at  least  as  much  in  positively  gaining  truth  as 
in  merely  escaping  dupery)  always  wait  with  impunity  till  the 
coercive  evidence  shall  have  arrived?  It  seems  a  priori  im- 
probable that  the  truth  should  be  so  nicely  adjusted  to  our  needs 
and  powers  as  that.  In  the  great  boarding  house  of  nature, 
the  cakes  and  the  butter  and  the  sirup  seldom  come  out  so  even 
and  leave  the  plates  so  clean.  Indeed,  we  should  view  them 
with  scientific  suspicion  if  they  did. 

DC 

Moral  questions  immediately  present  themselves  as  questions 
whose  solution  cannot  wait  for  sensible  proof.  A  moral  ques- 
tion is  a  question  not  of  what  sensibly  exists,  but  of  what  is 
good,  or  would  be  good  if  it  did  exist.  Science  can  tell  us  what 
exists;  but  to  compare  the  worths,  both  of  what  exists  and  of 
what  does  not  exist,  we  must  consult  not  science,  but  what 
Pascal  calls  our  heart.  Science  herself  consults  her  heart  when 
she  lays  it  down  that  the  infinite  ascertainment  of  fact  and  cor- 
rection of  false  belief  are  the  supreme  goods  for  man.  Chal- 
lenge the  statement,  and  science  can  only  repeat  it  oracularly, 
or  else  prove  it  by  showing  that  such  ascertainment  and  correc- 
tion bring  man  all  sorts  of  other  goods  which  man's  heart  in  turn 
declares.  The  question  of  having  moral  beliefs  at  all  or  not 
having  them  is  decided  by  our  will.     Are  our  moral  preferences 

'  The  heart  has  its  reasons  with  which  reason  is  unacquainted.  —  Editors 


THE   WILL   TO   BELIEVE  91 

true  or  false,  or  are  they  only  odd  biological  phenomena,  mak- 
ing things  good  or  bad  for  us,  but  in  themselves  indifferent? 
How  can  your  pure  intellect  decide?  If  your  heart  does  not 
want  a  world  of  moral  reality,  your  head  will  assuredly  never 
make  you  believe  in  one.  Mephistophelian  skepticism,  indeed, 
will  satisfy  the  head's  play  instincts  much  better  than  any  rigor- 
ous idealism  can.  Some  men  (even  at  the  student  age)  are  so 
naturally  cool  hearted  that  the  moralistic  hypothesis  never  has 
for  them  any  pungent  life,  and  in  their  supercilious  presence 
the  hot  young  moralist  always  feels  strangely  ill  at  ease.  The 
appearance  of  knowingness  is  on  their  side,  of  naivete  and  gulli- 
bility on  his.  Yet,  in  the  inarticulate  heart  of  him,  he  clings 
to  it  that  he  is  not  a  dupe,  and  that  there  is  a  realm  in  which 
(as  Emerson  says)  all  their  wit  and  intellectual  superiority  is 
no  better  than  the  cunning  of  a  fox.  Moral  skepticism  can  no 
more  be  refuted  or  proved  by  logic  than  intellectual  skepticism 
can.  When  we  stick  to  it  that  there  is  truth  (be  it  of  either 
kind),  we  do  so  with  our  whole  nature,  and  resolve  to  stand  or 
fall  by  the  results.  The  skeptic  with  his  whole  nature  adopts 
the  doubting  attitude ;  but  which  of  us  is  the  wiser,  Omniscience 
only  knows. 

Turn  now  from  these  wide  questions  of  good  to  a  certain  class 
of  questions  of  fact,  questions  concerning  personal  relations, 
states  of  mind  between  one  man  and  another.  Do  you  like  me 
or  not  ?  —  for  example.  Whether  you  do  or  not  depends,  in 
countless  instances,  on  whether  I  meet  you  halfway,  am  willing 
to  assume  that  you  must  like  me,  and  show  you  trust  and  ex- 
pectation. The  previous  faith  on  my  part  in  your  liking's 
existence  is  in  such  cases  what  makes  your  liking  come.  But 
if  I  stand  aloof,  and  refuse  to  budge  an  inch  until  I  have  objec- 
tive evidence,  until  you  shall  have  done  something  apt,  as  the 
absolutists  say,  ad  extorquendum  assensum  meum,^  ten  to  one 
your  liking  never  comes.  How  many  women's  hearts  are  van- 
quished by  the  mere  sanguine  insistence  of  some  man  that  thev 
must  love  him  !  he  will  not  consent  to  the  hypothesis  that  they 
1  For  compelling  my  approval.  —  Editors. 


92  WILLIAM  JAMES 

cannot.  The  desire  for  a  certain  kind  of  truth  here  brings  about 
that  special  truth's  existence ;  and  so  it  is  in  innumerable  cases 
of  other  sorts.  Who  gains  promotions,  boons,  appointments, 
but  the  man  in  whose  life  they  are  seen  to  play  the  part  of  live 
hypotheses,  who  discounts  them,  sacrifices  other  things  for  their 
sake  before  they  have  come,  and  takes  risks  for  them  in  advance  ? 
His  faith  acts  on  the  powers  above  him  as  a  claim,  and  creates 
its  own  verification. 

A  social  organism  of  any  sort  whatever,  large  or  small,  is 
what  it  is  because  each  member  proceeds  to  his  own  duty  with 
a  trust  that  the  other  members  will  simultaneously  do  theirs. 
Wherever  a  desired  result  is  achieved  by  the  cooperation  of 
many  independent  persons,  its  existence  as  a  fact  is  a  pure  con- 
sequence of  the  precursive  faith  in  one  another  of  those  imme- 
diately concerned.  A  government,  an  army,  a  commercial 
system,  a  ship,  a  college,  an  athletic  team,  all  exist  on  this  condi- 
tion, without  which  not  only  is  nothing  achieved,  but  nothing  is 
even  attempted.  A  whole  train  of  passengers  (individually 
brave  enough)  will  be  looted  by  a  few  highwaymen,  simply  be- 
cause the  latter  can  count  on  one  another,  while  each  passenger 
fears  that  if  he  makes  a  movement  of  resistance,  he  will  be  shot 
before  any  one  else  backs  him  up.  If  we  believed  that  the 
whole  earful  would  rise  at  once  with  us,  we  should  each  severally 
rise,  and  train  robbing  would  never  even  be  attempted.  There 
are,  then,  cases  where  a  fact  cannot  come  at  all  unless  a  prelimi- 
nary faith  exists  in  its  coming.  And  where  faith  in  a  fact  can 
help  create  the  fact,  that  would  be  an  insane  logic  which  should 
say  that  faith  running  ahead  of  scientific  evidence  is  the  "  low- 
est kind  of  immorality"  into  which  a  thinking  being  can  fall. 
Yet  such  is  the  logic  by  which  our  scientific  absolutists  pretend 
to  regulate  our  lives  ! 

X 

\ 

In  truths  dependent  on  our  personal  action,  then,  faith  based 

on  desire  is  certainly  a  lawful  and  possibly  an  indispensable 
thing. 


THE   WILL   TO   BELIEVE  93 

But  now,  it  will  be  said,  these  are  all  childish  human  cases, 
and  have  nothing  to  do  with  great  cosmical  matters,  like  the 
question  of  religious  faith.  Let  us  then  pass  on  to  that.  Reli- 
gions differ  so  much  in  their  accidents  that  in  discussing  the 
religious  question  we  must  make  it  very  generic  and  broad. 
What  then  do  we  now  mean  by  the  religious  hypothesis? 
Science  says  things  are ;  morality  says  some  things  are  better 
than  other  things ;   and  religion  says  essentially  two  things. 

First,  she  says  that  the  best  things  are  the  more  eternal  things, 
the  overlapping  things,  the  things  in  the  universe  that  throw 
the  last  stone,  so  to  speak,  and  say  the  final  word.  "Perfection 
is  eternal,"  —  this  phrase  of  Charles  Secretan  seems  a  good  way 
of  putting  this  first  affirmation  of  religion,  an  affirmation  which 
obviously  cannot  yet  be  verified  scientifically  at  all. 

The  second  affirmation  of  religion  is  that  we  are  better  off  even 
now  if  we  believe  her  first  affirmation  to  be  true. 

Now,  let  us  consider  what  the  logical  elements  of  this  situa- 
tion are  in  case  the  religious  hypothesis  in  both  its  branches  be 
really  true.  (Of  course,  we  must  admit  that  possibility  at  the 
outset.  If  we  are  to  discuss  the  question  at  all,  it  must  involve 
a  living  option.  If  for  any  of  you  reHgion  be  an  hypothesis  that 
cannot,  by  any  living  possibility  be  true,  then  you  need  go  no 
farther.  I  speak  to  the  "  saving  remnant "  alone.)  So  proceed- 
ing, we  see,  first,  that  religion  offers  itself  as  a  momentous  op- 
tion. We  are  supposed  to  gain,  even  now,  by  our  beUef,  and  to 
lose  by  our  nonbeUef,  a  certain  vital  good.  Secondly,  religion 
is  a  forced  option,  so  far  as  that  good  goes.  We  cannot  escape 
the  issue  by  remaining  skeptical  and  waiting  for  more  light,  be- 
cause, although  we  do  avoid  error  in  that  way  if  religion  be  un- 
true, we  lose  the  good,  if  it  be  true,  just  as  certainly  as  if  we  posi- 
tively chose  to  disbelieve.  It  is  as  if  a  man  should  hesitate  in- 
definitely to  ask  a  certain  woman  to  marry  him  because  he  was  not 
perfectly  sure  that  she  would  prove  an  angel  after  he  brought  her 
home.  Would  he  not  cut  himself  off  from  that  particular  angel- 
possibility  as  decisively  as  if  he  went  and  married  some  one 
else  ?     Skepticism,  then,  is  not  avoidance  of  option ;  it  is  option 


94  WILLIAM  JAMES 

of  a  certain  particular  kind  of  risk.  Better  risk  loss  of  truth  than 
chance  of  error,  —  that  is  your  faith-vetoer's  exact  position.  He 
is  actively  playing  his  stake  as  much  as  the  believer  is;  he  is 
backing  the  field  against  the  religious  hypothesis,  just  as  the 
believer  is  backing  the  religious  hypothesis  against  the  field. 
To  preach  skepticism  to  us  as  a  duty  until  "  sufficient  evidence  " 
for  religion  be  found,  is  tantamount  therefore  to  telling  us,  when 
in  presence  of  the  religious  hypothesis,  that  to  yield  to  our  fear 
of  its  being  error  is  wiser  and  better  than  to  yield  to  our  hope 
that  it  may  be  true.  It  is  not  intellect  against  all  passions,  then ; 
it  is  only  intellect  with  one  passion  laying  down  its  law.  And 
by  what,  forsooth,  is  the  supreme  wisdom  of  this  passion  war- 
ranted? Dupery  for  dupery,  what  proof  is  there  that  dupery 
through  hope  is  so  much  worse  than  dupery  through  fear?  I, 
for  one,  can  see  no  proof ;  and  I  simply  refuse  obedience  to  the 
scientist's  command  to  imitate  his  kind  of  option,  in  a  case  where 
my  own  stake  is  important  enough  to  give  me  the  right  to  choose 
my  own  form  of  risk.  If  religion  be  true  and  the  evidence  for  it 
be  still  insufficient,  I  do  not  wish,  by  putting  your  extinguisher 
upon  my  nature  (which  feels  to  me  as  if  it  had  after  all  some 
business  in  this  matter),  to  forfeit  my  sole  chance  in  life  of  get- 
ting upon  the  winning  side,  —  that  chance  depending,  of  course, 
on  my  willingness  to  run  the  risk  of  acting  as  if  my  passional 
need  of  taking  the  world  religiously  might  be  prophetic  and 
right. 

All  this  is  on  the  supposition  that  it  really  may  be  prophetic 
and  right,  and  that,  even  to  us  who  are  discussing  the  matter, 
religion  is  a  live  hypothesis  which  may  be  true.  Now,  to  most 
of  us  religion  comes  in  a  still  further  way  that  makes  a  veto  on 
our  active  faith  even  more  illogical.  The  more  perfect  and  more 
eternal  aspect  of  the  universe  is  represented  in  our  religions  as 
having  personal  form.  The  universe  is  no  longer  a  mere  //  to 
us,  but  a  Thou,  if  we  are  religious ;  and  any  relation  that  may 
be  possible  from  person  to  person  might  be  possible  here  For 
instance,  although  in  one  sense  we  are  passive  portions  of  the 
universe,  in  another  we  show  a  curious  autonomy,  as  if  we  were 


THE   WILL   TO   BELIEVE  95 

small  active  centers  on  our  own  account.  We  feel,  too,  as  if  the 
appeal  of  religion  to  us  were  made  to  our  own  active  good  will, 
as  if  evidence  might  be  forever  withheld  from  us  unless  we  met 
the  hypothesis  halfway.  To  take  a  trivial  illustration :  just 
as  a  man  who  in  a  company  of  gentlemen  made  no  advances, 
asked  a  warrant  for  every  concess'ion,  and  believed  no  one's 
word  without  proof,  would  cut  himself  off  by  such  churlishness 
from  all  the  social  rewards  that  a  more  trusting  spirit  would 
earn,  —  so  here,  one  who  should  shut  himself  up  in  snarling 
logicality  and  try  to  make  the  gods  extort  his  recognition  willy- 
nilly,  or  not  get  it  at  all,  might  cut  himself  off  forever  from  his 
only  opportunity  of  making  the  gods'  acquaintance.  This 
feeling,  forced  on  us  we  know  not  whence,  that  by  obstinately 
believing  that  there  are  gods  (although  not  to  do  so  would  be 
so  easy  both  for  our  logic  and  our  life)  we  are  doing  the  universe 
the  deepest  service  we  can,  seems  part  of  the  living  essence  of 
the  religious  hypothesis.  If  the  hypothesis  were  true  in  all  its 
parts,  including  this  one,  then  pure  intellectualism,  with  its 
veto  on  our  making  willing  advances,  would  be  an  absurdity; 
and  some  participation  of  our  sympathetic  nature  would  be 
logically  required.  I,  therefore,  for  one,  cannot  see  my  way  to 
accepting  the  agnostic  rules  for  truth-seeking,  or  willfully  agree 
to  keep  my  willing  nature  out  of  the  game.  I  cannot  do  so  for 
this  plain  reason,  that  a  rule  of  thinking  which  would  absolutely 
prevent  me  from  acknowledging  certain  kinds  of  truth  if  those  kinds 
of  truth  were  really  there,  would  be  an  irrational  rule.  That  for 
me  is  the  long  and  short  of  the  formal  logic  of  the  situation,  no 
matter  what  the  kinds  of  truth  might  materially  be. 

I  confess  I  do  not  see  how  this  logic  can  be  escaped.  But 
sad  experience  makes  me  fear  that  some  of  you  may  still  shrink 
from  radically  saying  with  me,  in  abstracto,  that  we  have  the 
right  to  believe  at  our  own  risk  any  hypothesis  that  is  live  enough 
to  tempt  our  will.  I  suspect,  however,  that  if  this  is  so,  it  is  be- 
cause you  have  got  away  from  the  abstract  logical  point  of  view 
altogether,  and  are  thinking  (perhaps  without  realizing  it)  of 
some  particular   religious   hypothesis  which  for  you  is  dead. 


96  WILLIAM  JAMES 

The  freedom  to  "  believe  what  we  will  "  you  apply  to  the  case  of 
some  patent  superstition ;  and  the  faith  you  think  of  is  the 
faith  defined  by  the  schoolboy  when  he  said,  "  Faith  is  when  you 
believe  something  that  you  know  ain't  true."  I  can  only  re- 
peat that  this  is  misapprehension.  In  concreto,  the  freedom  to 
believe  can  only  cover  living  options  which  the  intellect  of  the 
individual  cannot  by  itself  resolve ;  and  living  options  never 
seem  absurdities  to  him  who  has  them  to  consider.  When  I 
look  at  the  religious  question  as  it  really  puts  itself  to  concrete 
men,  and  when  I  think  of  all  the  possibilities  which  both  prac- 
tically and  theoretically  it  involves,  then  this  command  that 
we  shall  put  a  stopper  on  our  heart,  instincts,  and  courage,  and 
waii  —  acting  of  course  meanwhile  more  or  less  as  if  religion 
were  not  true  ^  —  till  doomsday,  or  till  such  time  as  our  intellect 
and  senses  working  together  may  have  raked  in  evidence  enough, 
—  this  command,  I  say,  seems  to  me  the  queerest  idol  ever 
manufactured  in  the  philosophic  cave.^  Were  we  scholastic 
absolutists,  there  might  be  more  excuse.  If  we  had  an  infallible 
intellect  with  its  objective  certitudes,  we  might  feel  ourselves 
disloyal  to  such  a  perfect  organ  of  knowledge  in  not  trusting  to 
it  exclusively,  in  not  waiting  for  its  releasing  word.  But  if  we 
are  empiricists,  if  we  believe  that  no  bell  in  us  tolls  to  let  us  know 
for  certain  when  truth  is  in  our  grasp,  then  it  seems  a  piece  of 
idle  fantasticality  to  preach  so  solemnly  our  duty  of  waiting  for 
the  bell.     Indeed  we  may  wait  if  we  will,  —  I  hope  you  do  not 

1  Since  belief  is  measured  by  action,  he  who  forbids  us  to  believe  rehgion 
to  be  true,  necessarily  also  forbids  us  to  act  as  we  should  if  we  did  believe  it 
to  be  true.  The  whole  defense  of  religious  faith  hinges  upon  action.  If  the 
action  required  or  inspired  by  the  rehgious  hypothesis  is  in  no  way  different 
from  that  dictated  by  the  naturalistic  hypothesis,  then  religious  faith  is  a 
pure  superfluity,  better  pruned  away,  and  controversy  about  its  legitimacy 
is  a  piece  of  idle  trifling,  unworthy  of  serious  minds.  I  myself  beheve,  of 
course,  that  the  religious  hypothesis  gives  to  the  world  an  expression  which 
specifically  determines  our  reactions,  and  makes  them  in  a  large  part  unlike 
what  they  might  be  on  a  purely  naturalistic  scheme  of  belief. 

2  The  "  Idol  of  the  Cave  "  is  the  form  of  fallacy  in  which  the  reason  is 
overruled  by  individual  preference.  —  Editors. 


THE   WILL    TO  BELIEVE  97 

think  that  I  am  denying  that,  —  but  if  we  do  so,  we  do  so 
at  our  peril  as  much  as  if  we  beheved.  In  either  case  we  ad, 
taking  our  Ufe  in  our  hands.  No  one  of  us  ought  to  issue  vetoes 
to  the  other,  nor  should  we  bandy  words  of  abuse.  We  ought, 
on  the  contrary,  dehcately  and  profoundly  to  respect  one  an- 
other's mental  freedom :  then  only  shall  we  bring  about  the 
intellectual  republic;  then  only  shall  we  have  that  spirit  of 
inner  tolerance  without  which  all  our  outer  tolerance  is  soulless, 
and  which  is  empiricism's  glory ;  then  only  shall  we  live  and  let 
live,  in  speculative  as  well  as  in  practical  things. 

I  began  by  a  reference  to  Fitz- James  Stephen ;  let  me  end  by 
a  quotation  from  him.  "What  do  you  think  of  yourself? 
What  do  you  think  of  the  world  ?  .  .  .  These  are  questions 
with  which  all  must  deal  as  it  seems  good  to  them.  They  are 
riddles  of  the  Sphinx,  and  in  some  way  or  other  we  must  deal 
with  them.  ...  In  all  important  transactions  of  life  we  have  to 
take  a  leap  in  the  dark.  ...  If  we  decide  to  leave  the  riddles 
unanswered,  that  is  a  choice ;  if  we  waver  in  our  answer,  that, 
too,  is  a  choice :  but  whatever  choice  we  make,  we  make  it  at 
our  peril.  If  a  man  chooses  to  turn  his  back  altogether  on  God 
and  the  future,  no  one  can  prevent  him ;  no  one  can  show  be- 
yond reasonable  doubt  that  he  is  mistaken.  If  a  man  thinks 
otherwise  and  acts  as  he  thinks,  I  do  not  see  that  any  one  can 
prove  that  he  is  mistaken.  Each  must  act  as  he  thinks  best ; 
and  if  he  is  wrong,  so  much  the  worse  for  him.  We  stand  on  a 
mountain  pass  in  the  midst  of  whirling  snow  and  blinding  mist, 
through  which  we  get  glimpses  now  and  then  of  paths  which 
may  be  deceptive.  If  we  stand  still,  we  shall  be  frozen  to  death. 
If  we  take  the  wrong  road,  we  shall  be  dashed  to  pieces.  We  dc 
not  certainly  know  whether  there  is  any  right  one.  What  mus: 
we  do?  'Be  strong  and  of  a  good  courage.'  Act  for  the  best, 
hope  for  the  best,  and  take  what  comes.  ...  If  death  ends 
all,  we  cannot  meet  death  better."  ^ 

^Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity,  p.  353,  2d  edition  (London,  1874). 


V 

OF   THE    LIBERTY    OF   THOUGHT   AND 
DISCUSSION 

John  Stuart  Mill 

[John  Stuart  Mill  (1806-1873),  eldest  son  of  James  Mill,  the  utilitarian, 
was  a  logician,  economist,  and  philosopher,  whose  influence  on  the 
social  and  political  movements  of  the  third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury can  hardly  be  overestimated.  Brought  up  by  his  father  after  the 
strictest  code  of  the  stern  utilitarian  school,  he  later  became  the  leader  of 
the  group  of  thinkers  who  were  to  continue  in  modified  form  the  traditions 
of  this  older  school  of  economists.  He  was  active  in  the  political  discussions 
of  the  day,  was  editor  and  joint  proprietor  of  the  London  and  Westminster 
Review  for  some  years,  served  one  term  in  Parliament,  and  throughout  his 
life  wrote  and  labored  unceasingly  for  social  and  political  reforms  and  for  the 
dissemination  of  the  principles  he  held  to  be  essential  to  human  happiness. 

Of  all  Mill's  writing,  the  volume  On  Liberty  (published  1859),  of 
which  the  following  selection  forms  the  second  chapter,  is  regarded  as  the 
most  carefully  prepared  and  highly  polished.  It  contains  the  clearest  statement 
of  the  author's  modified  individualism,  which  maintained  that  every  man 
should  be  allowed  all  liberty  that  did  not  interfere  with  that  of  his  neighbor ; 
and,  like  the  Subjection  of  Women,  a  chapter  of  which  appears  in  this  volume, 
it  illustrates  the  author's  interest  in  the  practical  aspects  of  his  question.  The 
purpose  of  the  essay,  as  declared  in  the  introductory  chapter,  is  to  assert  the 
principle  of  individual  liberty  in  thought  and  action,  in  order  that  a  restraint 
may  be  placed  upon  the  growing  tendency  of  the  majority  to  tyrannize,  an 
evil  which  has  supplanted  the  old  tyranny  of  rulers.  Since  Mill's  day  the 
'  trend  of  political  opinion  has  been  away  from  individuaUsm ;  but  among 
his  contemporaries  the  volume  had  great  influence.  A  suggestive  and 
elaborate  attack  on  Mill's  position  may  be  found  in  Sir  James  Fitzjames 
Stephen's  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity  (1873).] 

The  time,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  is  gone  by,  when  any  defense  would 
be  necessary  of  the  "  liberty  of  the  press"  as  one  of  the  securi- 
ties against  corrupt  or  tyrannical  government.     No  argument,  we 

98 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION  99 

may  suppose,  can  now  be  needed,  against  permitting  a  legislature 
or  an  executive,  not  identified  in  interest  with  the  people,  to  pre- 
scribe opinions  to  them,  and  determine  what  doctrines  or  what 
arguments  they  shall  be  allowed  to  hear.  This  aspect  of  the 
question,  besides,  has  been  so  often  and  so  triumphantly  en- 
forced by  preceding  writers,  that  it  needs  not  be  specially  in- 
sisted on  in  this  place.  Though  the  law  of  England,  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  press,  is  as  servile  to  this  day  as  it  was  in  the  time  of 
the  Tudors,  there  is  little  danger  of  its  being  actually  put  in  force 
against  political  discussion,  except  during  some  temporary  panic, 
when  fear  of  insurrection  drives  ministers  and  judges  from  their 
propriety;  and,  speaking  generally,  it  is  not,  in  constitutional 
countries,  to  be  apprehended  that  the  government,  whether 
completely  responsible  to  the  people  or  not,  will  often  attempt  to 
control  the  expression  of  opinion,  except  when  in  doing  so  it 
makes  itself  the  organ  of  the  general  intolerance  of  the  public. 
Let  us  suppose,  therefore,  that  the  government  is  entirely  at  one 
with  the  people,  and  never  thinks  of  exerting  any  power  of  coer- 
cion unless  in  agreement  with  what  it  conceives  to  be  their  voice. 
But  I  deny  the  right  of  the  people  to  exercise  such  coercion,  either 
by  themselves  or  by  their  government.  The  power  itself  is  ille- 
gitimate. The  best  government  has  no  more  title  to  it  than  the 
worst.  It  is  as  noxious,  or  more  noxious,  when  exerted  in  ac- 
cordance with  public  opinion  than  when  in  opposition  to  it.  If 
all  mankind,  minus  one,  were  of  one  opinion,  and  only  one  person 
were  of  the  contrary  opinion,  mankind  would  be  no  more  justi- 
fied in  silencing  that  one  person  than  he,  if  he  had  the  power, 
would  be  justified  in  silencing  mankind.  Were  an  opinion  a  per- 
sonal possession  of  no  value  except  to  the  owner;  if  to  be  ob- 
structed in  the  enjoyment  of  it  were  simply  a  private  injury,  it 
would  make  some  difference  whether  the  injury  was  inflicted  only 
on  a  few  persons  or  on  many.  But  the  peculiar  evil  of  silencing 
the  expression  of  an  opinion  is,  that  it  is  robbing  the  human  race ; 
posterity  as  well  as  the  existing  generation;  those  who  dis- 
sent from  the  opinion,  still  more  than  those  who  hold  it.  If  the 
opinion  is  right,  they  are  deprived  of  the  opportunity  of  exchang- 


lOO  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

ing  error  for  truth ;  if  wrong,  they  lose,  what  is  almost  as  great  a 
benefit,  the  clearer  perception  and  livelier  impression  of  truth, 
produced  by  its  collision  with  error. 

It  is  necessary  to  consider  separately  these  two  hypotheses, 
each  of  which  has  a  distinct  branch  of  the  argument  correspond- 
ing to  it.  We  can  never  be  sure  that  the  opinion  we  are  endeav- 
oring to  stifle  is  a  false  opinion ;  and  if  we  were  sure,  stifling  it 
would  be  an  evil  still. 

First :  the  opinion  which  it  is  attempted  to  suppress  by  author- 
ity may  possibly  be  true.  Those  who  desire  to  suppress  it,  of 
course,  deny  its  truth ;  but  they  are  not  infallible.  They  have  no 
authority  to  decide  the  question  for  all  mankind,  and  exclude 
every  other  person  from  the  means  of  judging.  To  refuse  a  hear- 
ing to  an  opinion,  because  they  are  sure  that  it  is  false,  is  to  as- 
sume that  their  certainty  is  the  same  thing  as  absolute  certainty. 
All  silencing  of  discussion  is  an  assumption  of  infallibility.  Its 
condemnation  may  be  allowed  to  rest  on  this  common  argument, 
not  the  worse  for  being  common. 

Unfortunately  for  the  good  sense  of  mankind,  the  fact  of  their 
fallibility  is  far  from  carrying  the  weight  in  their  practical  judg- 
ment, which  is  always  allowed  to  it  in  theory ;  for  while  every  one 
well  knows  himself  to  be  fallible,  few  think  it  necessary  to  take 
any  precautions  against  their  own  fallibility,  or  admit  the  sup- 
position that  any  opinion,  of  which  they  feel  very  certain,  may 
be  one  of  the  examples  of  the  error  to  which  they  acknowledge 
themselves  to  be  liable.  Absolute  princes,  or  others  who  are 
accustomed  to  unlimited  deference,  usually  feel  this  complete 
confidence  in  their  own  opinions  on  nearly  all  subjects.  People 
more  happily  situated,  who  sometimes  hear  their  opinions  dis- 
puted, and  are  not  wholly  unused  to  be  set  right  when  they  are 
wrong,  place  the  same  unbounded  reliance  only  on  such  of  their 
opinions  as  are  shared  by  all  who  surround  them,  or  to  whom  they 
habitually  defer ;  for  in  proportion  to  a  man's  want  of  confidence 
in  his  own  solitary  judgment,  does  he  usually  repose,  with  im- 
plicit trust,  on  the  infallibility  of  "  the  world  "  in  general.  And  the 


i.ii5t.KTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        loi 

world,  to  each  individual,  means  the  part  of  it  with  which  he 
comes  in  contact ;  his  party,  his  sect,  his  church,  his  class  of 
society :  the  man  may  be  called,  by  comparison,  almost  liberal 
and  large-minded  to  whom  it  means  anything  so  comprehensive 
as  his  own  country  or  his  own  age.  Nor  is  his  faith  in  this  collec- 
tive authority  at  all  shaken  by  his  being  aware  that  other  ages, 
countries,  sects,  churches,  classes,  and  parties  have  thought,  and 
even  now  think,  the  exact  reverse.  He  devolves  upon  his  own 
world  the  responsibility  of  being  in  the  right  against  the  dissen- 
tient worlds  of  other  people ;  and  it  never  troubles  him  that  mere 
accident  has  decided  which  of  these  numerous  worlds  is  the  ob- 
ject of  his  reliance,  and  that  the  same  causes  which  make  him  a 
Churchman  in  London  would  have  made  him  a  Buddhist  or  a 
Confucian  in  Pekin.  Yet  it  is  as  evident  in  itself,  as  any  amount 
of  argument  can  make  it,  that  ages  are  no  more  infallible  than 
individuals ;  every  age  having  held  many  opinions  which  sub- 
sequent ages  have  deemed  not  only  false  but  absurd ;  and  it  is 
as  certain  that  many  opinions,  now  general,  will  be  rejected  by 
future  ages,  as  it  is  that  many,  once  general,  are  rejected  by  the 
present. 

The  objection  likely  to  be  made  to  this  argument  would  prob- 
ably take  some  such  form  as  the  following:  There  is  no  greater 
assumption  of  infallibility  in  forbidding  the  propagation  of  error 
than  in  any  other  thing  which  is  done  by  public  authority  on  its 
own  judgment  and  responsibility.  Judgment  is  given  to  men 
that  they  may  use  it.  Because  it  may  be  used  erroneously,  are 
men  to  be  told  that  they  ought  not  to  use  it  at  all  ?  To  prohibit 
what  they  think  pernicious,  is  not  claiming  exemption  from  error, 
but  fulfilling  the  duty  incumbent  on  them,  although  fallible,  of 
acting  on  their  conscientious  conviction.  If  we  were  never  to  act 
on  our  opinions,  because  those  opinions  may  be  wrong,  we  should 
leave  all  our  interests  uncared  for,  and  all  our  duties  unperformed. 
An  objection  which  applies  to  all  conduct,  can  be  no  valid  objec- 
tion to  any  conduct  in  particular.  It  is  the  duty  of  governments, 
and  of  individuals,  to  form  the  truest  opinions  they  can  ;  to  form 
them  carefully,  and  never  impose  them  upon  others  unless  they 


I02  JOHN   STUART   MILL 

are  quite  sure  of  being  right.  But  when  they  are  sure  (such 
reasoners  may  say),  it  is  not  conscientiousness  but  cowardice  to 
shrink  from  acting  on  their  opinions,  and  allow  doctrines  which 
they  honestly  think  dangerous  to  the  welfare  of  mankind,  either 
in  this  life  or  in  another,  to  be  scattered  abroad  without  re- 
straint, because  other  people,  in  less  enlightened  times,  have  per- 
secuted opinions  now  believed  to  be  true.  Let  us  take  care,  it 
may  be  said,  not  to  make  the  same  mistake;  but  governments 
and  nations  have  made  mistakes  in  other  things,  which  are  not 
denied  to  be  fit  subjects  for  the  exercise  of  authority;  they  have 
laid  on  bad  taxes,  made  unjust  wars.  Ought  we  therefore  to  lay 
on  no  taxes,  and,  under  whatever  provocation,  make  no  wars  ? 
Men  and  governments  must  act  to  the  best  of  their  ability. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  absolute  certainty,  but  there  is  assur- 
ance sufficient  for  the  purposes  of  human  life.  We  may,  and 
must,  assume  our  opinion  to  be  true  for  the  guidance  of  our  own 
conduct ;  and  it  is  assuming  no  more  when  we  forbid  bad  men  to 
pervert  society  by  the  propagation  of  opinions  which  we  regard 
as  false  and  pernicious. 

I  answer  that  it  is  assuming  very  much  more.  There  is  the 
greatest  difference  between  presuming  an  opinion  to  be  true,  be- 
cause, with  every  opportunity  for  contesting  it,  it  has  not  been 
refuted,  and  assuming  its  truth  for  the  purpose  of  not  permitting 
its  refutation.  Complete  liberty  of  contradicting  and  disproving 
our  opinion  is  the  very  condition  which  justifies  us  in  assuming  its 
truth  for  purposes  of  action ;  and  on  no  other  terms  can  a  being 
with  human  faculties  have  any  rational  assurance  of  being  right. 

When  we  consider  either  the  history  of  opinion,  or  the  ordinary 
conduct  of  human  life,  to  what  is  it  to  be  ascribed  that  the  one 
and  the  other  are  no  worse  than  they  are  ?  Not  certainly  to  the 
inherent  force  of  the  human  understanding ;  for,  on  any  matter 
not  self-evident,  there  are  ninety-nine  persons  totally  incapable  of 
judging  of  it,  for  one  who  is  capable ;  and  the  capacity  of  the 
hundredth  person  is  only  comparative ;  for  the  majority  of  the 
eminent  men  of  every  past  generation  held  many  opinions  now 
known  to  be  erroneous,  and  did  or  approved  numerous  things 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        103 

which  no  one  will  now  justify.  Why  is  it,  then,  that  there  is  on 
the  whole  a  preponderance  among  mankind  of  rational  opinions 
and  rational  conduct  ?  If  there  really  is  this  preponderance,  — 
which  there  must  be,  unless  human  affairs  are,  and  have  always 
been,  in  an  almost  desperate  state,  —  it  is  owing  to  a  quality  of 
the  human  mind,  the  source  of  everything  respectable  in  man 
either  as  an  intellectual  or  as  a  moral  being ;  namely,  that  his  er- 
rors are  corrigible.  He  is  capable  of  rectifying  his  mistakes,  by 
discussion  and  experience.  Not  by  experience  alone.  There 
must  be  discussion,  to  show  how  experience  is  to  be  interpreted. 
Wrong  opinions  and  practices  gradually  yield  to  fact  and  argu- 
ment; but  facts  and  arguments,  to  produce  any  effect  on  the 
mind,  must  be  brought  before  it.  Very  few  facts  are  able  to  tell 
their  own  story,  without  comments  to  bring  out  their  meaning. 
The  whole  strength  and  value,  then,  of  human  judgment,  de- 
pending on  the  one  property,  that  it  can  be  set  right  when  it  is 
wrong,  reliance  can  be  placed  on  it  only  when  the  means  of  set- 
ting it  right  are  kept  constantly  at  hand.  In  the  case  of  any  per- 
son whose  judgment  is  really  deserving  of  confidence,  how  has  it 
become  so  ?  Because  he  has  kept  his  mind  open  to  criticism  of  his 
opinions  and  conduct.  Because  it  has  been  his  practice  to  listen 
to  all  that  could  be  said  against  him ;  to  profit  by  as  much  of  it  as 
was  just,  and  expound  to  himself, 'and  upon  occasion  to  others, 
the  fallacy  of  what  was  fallacious.  Because  he  has  felt,  that  the 
only  way  in  which  a  human  being  can  make  some  approach  to 
knowing  the  whole  of  a  subject,  is  by  hearing  what  can  be  said 
about  it  by  persons  of  every  variety  of  opinion,  and  studying  all 
modes  in  which  it  can  be  looked  at  by  every  character  of  mind. 
No  wise  man  ever  acquired  his  wisdom  in  any  mode  but  this ; 
nor  is  it  in  the  nature  of  human  intellect  to  become  wise  in  any 
other  manner.  The  steady  habit  of  correcting  and  completing 
his  own  opinion  by  collating  it  with  those  of  others,  so  far  from 
causing  doubt  and  hesitation  in  carrying  it  into  practice,  is  the 
only  stable  foundation  for  a  just  reliance  on  it ;  for,  being  cogni- 
zant of  all  that  can,  at  least  obviously,  be  said  against  him,  and 
having  taken  up  his  position  against  all  gainsayers,  —  knowing 


I04  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

that  he  has  sought  for  objections  and  difficulties,  instead  of 
avoiding  them,  and  has  shut  out  no  light  which  can  be  thrown 
apon  the  subject  from  any  quarter,  —  he  has  a  right  to  think  his 
judgment  better  than  that  of  any  person,  or  any  multitude,  who 
have  not  gone  through  a  similar  process. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  require  that  what  the  wisest  of  mankind, 
those  who  are  best  entitled  to  trust  their  own  judgment,  find 
necessary  to  warrant  their  relying  on  it,  should  be  submitted  to 
by  that  miscellaneous  collection  of  a  few  wise  and  many  foolish 
individuals,  called  the  public.  The  most  intolerant  of  churches, 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  even  at  the  canonization  of  a  saint, 
admits,  and  listens  patiently  to,  a  "devil's  advocate."  The  holi- 
est of  men,  it  appears,  cannot  be  admitted  to  posthumous  honors, 
until  all  that  the  devil  could  say  against  him  is  known  and 
weighed.  If  even  the  Newtonian  philosophy  were  not  permitted 
to  be  questioned,  mankind  could  not  feel  as  complete  assurance 
of  its  truth  as  they  now  do.  The  beliefs  which  we  have  most 
warrant  for,  have  no  safeguard  to  rest  on,  but  a  standing  invita- 
tion to  the  whole  world  to  prove  them  unfounded.  If  the  chal- 
lenge is  not  accepted,  or  is  accepted  and  the  attempt  fails,  we  are 
far  enough  from  certainty  still ;  but  we  have  done  the  best  that 
the  existing  state  of  human  reason  admits  of ;  we  have  neglected 
nothing  that  could  give  the  truth  a  chance  of  reaching  us :  if  the 
lists  are  kept  open,  we  may  hope  that  if  there  be  a  better  truth,  it 
will  be  found  when  the  human  mind  is  capable  of  receiving  it ; 
and  in  the  meantime  we  may  rely  on  having  attained  such  ap- 
proach to  truth  as  is  possible  in  our  own  day.  This  is  the 
amount  of  certainty  attainable  by  a  fallible  being,  and  this  the 
sole  way  of  attaining  it. 

Strange  it  is,  that  men  should  admit  the  validity  of  the  argu- 
ments for  free  discussion,  but  object  to  their  being  "  pushed  to  an 
extreme  "  ;  not  seeing  that  unless  the  reasons  are  good  for  an  ex- 
treme case,  they  are  not  good  for  any  case.  Strange  that  they 
should  imagine  that  they  are  not  assuming  infallibility,  when 
they  acknowledge  that  there  should  be  free  discussion  on  all  sub- 
jects which  can  possibly  be  doubtful,  but  think  that  some  partic- 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        105 

dlar  principle  or  doctrine  should  be  forbidden  to  be  questioned 
because  it  is  so  certain,  that  is,  because  they  are  certain  that  it  is 
certain.  To  call  any  proposition  certain,  while  there  is  any  one 
who  would  deny  its  certainty  if  permitted,  but  who  is  not  per- 
mitted, is  to  assume  that  we  ourselves,  and  those  who  agree  with 
us,  are  the  judges  of  certainty,  and  judges  without  hearing  the 
other  side. 

In  the  present  age  —  which  has  been  described  as  "destitute 
of  faith,  but  terrified  at  skepticism"  —  in  which  people  feel  sure, 
not  so  much  that  their  opinions  are  true,  as  that  they  should  not 
know  what  to  do  without  them  —  the  claims  of  an  opinion  to  be 
protected  from  public  attack  are  rested  not  so  much  on  its  truth, 
as  on  its  importance  to  society.  There  are,  it  is  alleged,  certain 
beliefs  so  useful,  not  to  say  indispensable,  to  well-being  that  it  is 
as  much  the  duty  of  governments  to  uphold  those  beliefs,  as  to 
protect  any  other  of  the  interests  of  society.  In  a  case  of  such 
necessity,  and  so  directly  in  the  line  of  their  duty,  something  less 
than  infallibility  may,  it  is  maintained,  warrant,  and  even  bind, 
governments,  to  act  on  their  own  opinion,  confirmed  by  the  gen- 
eral opinion  of  mankind.  It  is  also  often  argued,  and  still  oftener 
thought,  that  none  but  bad  men  would  desire  to  weaken  these 
salutary  beliefs ;  and  there  can  be  nothing  wrong,  it  is  thought,  in 
restraining  bad  men,  and  prohibiting  what  only  such  men  would 
wish  to  practice.  This  mode  of  thinking  makes  the  justification 
of  restraints  on  discussion  not  a  question  of  the  truth  of  doctrines, 
but  of  their  usefulness ;  and  flatters  itself  by  that  means  to  escape 
the  responsibility  of  claiming  to  be  an  infallible  judge  of  opinions. 
But  those  who  thus  satisfy  themselves  do  not  perceive  that  the 
assumption  of  infallibility  is  merely  shifted  from  one  point  to  an- 
other. The  usefulness  of  an  opinion  is  itself  matter  of  opinion : 
as  disputable,  as  open  to  discussion,  and  requiring  discussion  as 
much,  as  the  opinion  itself.  There  is  the  same  need  of  an  infal- 
lible judge  of  opinions  to  decide  an  opinion  to  be  noxious,  as  to 
decide  it  to  be  false,  unless  the  opinion  condemned  has  full  oppor- 
tunity of  defending  itself.  And  it  will  not  do  to  say  that  the  her- 
etic may  be  allowed  to  maintain  the  utility  or  harmlessness  of 


io6  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

his  opinion,  though  forbidden  to  maintain  its  truth.  The  truth 
of  an  opinion  is  part  of  its  utility.  If  we  would  know  whether 
or  not  it  is  desirable  that  a  proposition  should  be  believed, 
is  it  possible  to  exclude  the  consideration  of  whether  or  not 
it  is  true?  In  the  opinion,  not  of  bad  men,  but  of  the  best 
men,  no  belief  which  is  contrary  to  truth  can  be  really  useful : 
and  can  you  prevent  such  men  from  urging  that  plea,  when 
they  are  charged  with  culpability  for  denying  some  doctrine 
which  they  are  told  is  useful,  but  which  they  believe  to  be 
false?  Those  who  are  on  the  side  of  received  opinions  never 
fail  to  take  all  possible  advantage  of  this  plea ;  you  do  not  find 
them  handling  the  question  of  utility  as  if  it  could  be  completely 
abstracted  from  that  of  truth;  on  the  contrary,  it  is,  above  all, 
because  their  doctrine  is  "the  truth,"  that  the  knowledge  or  the 
belief  of  it  is  held  to  be  so  indispensable.  There  can  be  no  fair 
discussion  of  the  question  of  usefulness,  when  an  argument  so 
vital  may  be  employed  on  one  side,  but  not  on  the  other.  And  in 
point  of  fact,  when  law  or  public  feeling  do  not  permit  the  truth 
of  an  opinion  to  be  disputed,  they  are  just  as  little  tolerant  of  a 
denial  of  its  usefulness.  The  utmost  they  allow  is  an  exten- 
uation of  its  absolute  necessity,  or  of  the  positive  guilt  of  reject- 
ing it. 

In  order  more  fully  to  illustrate  the  mischief  of  denying  a  hear- 
ing to  opinions  because  we,  in  our  own  judgment,  have  con- 
demned them,  it  will  be  desirable  to  fix  down  the  discussion  to  a 
concrete  case ;  and  I  choose,  by  preference,  the  cases  which  are 
least  favorable  to  me  —  in  which  the  argument  against  freedom 
of  opinion,  both  on  the  score  of  truth  and  on  that  of  utility,  is  con- 
sidered the  strongest.  Let  the  opinions  impugned  be  the  belief 
in  a  God  and  in  a  future  state,  or  any  of  the  commonly  received 
doctrines  of  morality.  To  fight  the  battle  on  such  ground,  gives 
a  great  advantage  to  an  unfair  antagonist ;  since  he  will  be  sure 
to  say  (and  many  who  have  no  desire  to  be  unfair  will  say  it  in- 
ternally), Are  these  the  doctrines  which  you  do  not  deem  suffi- 
ciently certain  to  be  taken  under  the  protection  of  law  ?  Is  the 
belief  in  a  God  one  of  the  opinions,  to  feel  sure  of  which  you  hold 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        107 

to  be  assuming  infallibility?  But  I  must  be  permitted  to  ob- 
serve, that  it  is  not  the  feeling  sure  of  a  doctrine  (be  it  what  it 
may)  which  I  call  an  assumption  of  infallibility.  It  is  the  under- 
taking to  decide  that  question  for  others,  without  allowing  them 
to  hear  what  can  be  said  on  the  contrary  side.  And  I  denounce 
and  reprobate  this  pretension  not  the  less,  if  put  forth  on  the 
side  of  my  most  solemn  convictions.  However  positive  any  one's 
persuasion  may  be,  not  only  of  the  falsity,  but  of  the  pernicious 
consequences  —  not  only  of  the  pernicious  consequences,  but  (to 
adopt  expressions  which  I  altogether  condemn)  the  immorality 
and  impiety  of  an  opinion ;  yet  if,  in  pursuance  of  that  private 
judgment,  though  backed  by  the  public  judgment  of  his  country 
or  his  contemporaries,  he  prevents  the  opinion  from  being  heard 
in  its  defense,  he  assumes  infallibility.  And  so  far  from  the  as- 
sumption being  less  objectionable  or  less  dangerous  because  the 
opinion  is  called  immoral  or  impious,  this  is  the  case  of  all  others 
in  which  it  is  most  fatal.  These  are  exactly  the  occasions  on 
which  the  men  of  one  generation  commit  those  dreadful  mistakes 
which  excite  the  astonishment  and  horror  of  posterity.  It  is 
among  such  that  we  find  the  instances  memorable  in  history, 
when  the  arm  of  the  law  has  been  employed  to  root  out  the  best 
men  and  the  noblest  doctrines ;  with  deplorable  success  as  to  the 
men,  though  some  of  the  doctrines  have  survived  to  be  (as  if  in 
mockery)  invoked,  in  defense  of  similar  conduct  towards  those 
who  dissent  from  them,  or  from  their  received  interpretation. 

Mankind  can  hardly  be  too  often  reminded  that  there  was  once 
a  man  named  Socrates,  between  whom  and  the  legal  authorities 
and  public  opinion  of  his  time  there  took  place  a  memorable  col- 
lision. Born  in  an  age  and  country  abounding  in  individual  great- 
ness, this  man  has  been  handed  down  to  us  by  those  who  best 
knew  both  him  and  the  age,  as  the  most  virtuous  man  in  it ;  while 
we  know  him  as  the  head  and  prototype  of  all  subsequent  teachers 
of  virtue,  the  source  equally  of  the  lofty  inspiration  of  Plato  and 
the  judicious  utilitarianism  of  Aristotle,  "i  maestri  di  color  che 
sanno,^'  ^  the  two  headsprings  of  ethical  as  of  all  other  philosophy, 
^  The  teachers  of  those  who  know.  —  Editors. 


io8  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

This  acknowledged  master  of  all  the  eminent  thinkers  who  have 
since  lived  —  whose  fame,  still  growing  after  more  than  two 
thousand  years ,  all  but  outweighs  the  whole  remainder  of  the 
names  which  make  his  native  city  illustrious  —  was  put  to  death 
by  his  countrymen,  after  a  judicial  conviction,  for  impiety  and 
immorality.  Impiety,  in  denying  the  gods  recognized  by  the 
state ;  indeed  his  accuser  asserted  (see  the  Apologia  ^)  that  he 
believed  in  no  gods  at  all.  Immorality,  in  being,  by  his  doctrines 
and  instructions,  a  "corrupter  of  youth."  Of  these  charges  the 
tribunal,  there  is  every  ground  for  beUeving,  honestly  found  him 
guilty,  and  condemned  the  man  who  probably  of  all  then  born  had 
deserved  best  of  mankind,  to  be  put  to  death  as  a  criminal. 

To  pass  from  this  to  the  only  other  instance  of  judicial  in- 
iquity, the  mention  of  which,  after  the  condemnation  of  Socrates, 
would  not  be  an  anticlimax :  the  event  which  took  place  on  Cal- 
vary rather  more  than  eighteen  hundred  years  ago.  The  man 
who  left  on  the  memory  of  those  who  witnessed  his  life  and  con- 
versation such  an  impression  of  his  moral  grandeur  that  eighteen 
subsequent  centuries  have  done  homage  to  him  as  the  Almighty 
in  person,  was  ignominiously  put  to  death,  as  what  ?  As  a  blas- 
phemer. Men  did  not  merely  mistake  their  benefactor,  they  mis- 
took him  for  the  exact  contrary  of  what  he  was,  and  treated 
him  as  that  prodigy  of  impiety,  which  they  themselves  are  now 
held  to  be,  for  their  treatment  of  him.  The  feelings  with  which 
mankind  now  regard  these  lamentable  transactions,  especially 
the  later  of  the  two,  render  them  extremely  unjust  in  their  judg- 
ment of  the  unhappy  actors.  These  were,  to  all  appearance,  not 
bad  men  —  not  worse  than  men  commonly  are,  but  rather  the 
contrary ;  men  who  possessed  in  a  full,  or  somewhat  more  than  a 
full,  measure  the  religious,  moral,  and  patriotic  feelings  of  their 
time  and  people :  the  very  kind  of  men  who,  in  all  times,  our  own 
included,  have  every  chance  of  passing  through  life  blameless 
and  respected.  The  high  priest  who  rent  his  garments  when  the 
words  were  pronounced,  which,  according  to  all  the  ideas  of  his 

1  Plato's  Apology,  which  purports  to  give  Socrates's  own  defense  at  the 
trial  in  which  he  was  condemned.  —  Editors. 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        log 

country,  constituted  the  blackest  guilt,  was  in  all  probability 
quite  as  sincere  in  his  horror  and  indignation  as  the  generality 
of  respectable  and  pious  men  now  are  in  the  religious  and  moral 
sentiments  they  profess ;  and  most  of  those  who  now  shudder  at 
his  conduct,  if  they  had  lived  in  his  time,  and  been  born  Jews, 
would  have  acted  precisely  as  he  did.  Orthodox  Christians  who 
are  tempted  to  think  that  those  who  stoned  to  death  the  first 
martyrs  must  have  been  worse  men  than  they  themselves  are, 
ought  to  remember  that  one  of  those  persecutors  was  Saint 
Paul. 

Let  us  add  one  more  example,  the  most  striking  of  all,  if  the 
impressiveness  of  an  error  is  measured  by  the  wisdom  and  virtue 
of  him  who  falls  into  it.  If  ever  any  one,  possessed  of  power,  had 
grounds  for  thinking  himself  the  best  and  most  enlightened 
among  his  contemporaries,  it  was  the  Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius. 
Absolute  monarch  of  the  whole  civilized  world,  he  preserved 
through  life  not  only  the  most  unblemished  justice,  but,  what  was 
less  to  be  expected  from  his  Stoical  breeding,  the  tenderest 
heart.  The  few  failings  which  are  attributed  to  him  were  all  on 
the  side  of  indulgence;  while  his  writings,  the  highest  ethical 
product  of  the  ancient  mind,  differ  scarcely  perceptibly,  if  they 
differ  at  all,  from  the  most  characteristic  teachings  of  Christ. 
This  man,  a  better  Christian  in  all  but  the  dogmatic  sense  of  the 
word,  than  almost  any  of  the  ostensibly  Christian  sovereigns 
who  have  since  reigned,  persecuted  Christianity.  Placed  at  the 
summit  of  all  the  previous  attainments  of  humanity,  with  an 
open,  unfettered  intellect,  and  a  character  which  led  him  of  him- 
self to  embody  in  his  moral  writings  the  Christian  ideal,  he  yet 
failed  to  see  that  Christianity  was  to  be  a  good  and  not  an  evil 
to  the  world,  with  his  duties  to  which  he  was  so  deeply  penetrated. 
Existing  society  he  knew  to  be  in  a  deplorable  state.  But  such 
as  it  was,  he  saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  that  it  was  held  together, 
and  prevented  from  being  worse,  by  belief  and  reverence  of  the 
recei\'ed  divinities.  As  a  ruler  of  mankind,  he  deemed  it  his 
duty  not  to  suffer  society  to  fall  in  pieces ;  and  saw  not  how,  if 
its  existing  ties  were  removed,  any  others  could  be  formed  which 


no  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

could  again  knit  it  together.  The  new  religion  openly  aimed  at 
dissolving  these  ties;  unless,  therefore,  it  was  his  duty  to  adopt 
that  religion,  it  seemed  to  be  his  duty  to  put  it  down.  Inas- 
much, then,  as  the  theology  of  Chiistianity  did  not  appear  to  him 
true  or  of  divine  origin ;  inasmuch  as  this  strange  history  of  a 
crucified  God  was  not  credible  to  him,  and  a  system  which  pur- 
ported to  rest  entirely  upon  a  foundation  to  him  so  wholly  un- 
believable could  not  be  foreseen  by  him  to  be  that  renovating 
agency  which,  after  all  abatements,  it  has  in  fact  proved  to  be, — 
the  gentlest  and  most  amiable  of  philosophers  and  rulers,  under 
a  solemn  sense  of  duty,  authorized  the  persecution  of  Christianity. 
To  my  mind  this  is  one  of  the  most  tragical  facts  in  all  history. 
It  is  a  bitter  thought,  how  different  a  thing  the  Christianity  of 
the  world  might  have  been,  if  the  Christian  faith  had  been  adopted 
as  the  religion  of  the  empire  under  the  auspices  of  Marcus 
Aurelius  instead  of  those  of  Constantine.  But  it  would  be 
equally  unjust  to  him  and  false  to  truth,  to  deny  that  no  one  plea 
which  can  be  urged  for  punishing  anti-Christian  teaching  was 
wanting  to  Marcus  Aurelius  for  punishing,  as  he  did,  the  propa- 
gation of  Christianity.  No  Christian  more  firmly  believes  that 
Atheism  is  false,  and  tends  to  the  dissolution  of  society,  than 
Marcus  AureHus  believed  the  same  things  of  Christianity;  he 
who,  of  all  men  then  living,  might  have  been  thought  the  most 
capable  of  appreciating  it.  Unless  any  one  who  approves  of 
punishment  for  the  promulgation  of  opinions,  flatters  himself 
that  he  is  a  wiser  and  better  man  than  Marcus  Aurelius  —  more 
deeply  versed  in  the  wisdom  of  his  time,  more  elevated  in  his  in- 
tellect above  it  —  more  earnest  in  his  search  for  truth,  or  more 
single-minded  in  his  devotion  to  it  when  found,  —  let  him  ab- 
stain from  that  assumption  of  the  joint  infallibility  of  himself  and 
the  multitude,  which  the  great  Antoninus  made  with  so  unfortu- 
nate a  result. 

Aware  of  the  impossibility  of  defending  the  use  of  punishment 
for  restraining  irreligious  opinions,  by  any  argument  which  will 
not  justify  Marcus  Antoninus,  the  enemies  of  religious  freedom, 
when  hard  pressed,  occasionally  accept  this  consequence,  and  say, 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        iii 

with  Dr.  Johnson,  that  the  persecutors  of  Christianity  were  in  the 
right ;  that  persecution  is  an  ordeal  through  which  truth  ought 
to  pass,  and  always  passes  successfully,  legal  penalties  being,  in 
the  end,  powerless  against  truth,  though  sometimes  beneficially 
effective  against  mischievous  errors.  This  is  a  form  of  the  argu- 
ment for  religious  intolerance,  sufficiently  remarkable  not  to  be 
passed  without  notice. 

A  theory  which  maintains  that  truth  may  justifiably  be  per- 
secuted because  persecution  cannot  possibly  do  it  any  harm 
cannot  be  charged  with  being  intentionally  hostile  to  the  recep- 
tion of  new  truths ;  but  we  cannot  commend  the  generosity  of 
its  dealing  with  the  persons  to  whom  mankind  are  indebted  for 
them.  To  discover  to  the  world  something  which  deeply  con- 
cerns it,  and  of  which  it  was  previously  ignorant ;  to  prove  to  it 
that  it  had  been  mistaken  on  some  vital  point  of  temporal  or 
spiritual  interest,  is  as  important  a  service  as  a  human  being  can 
render  to  his  fellow  creatures,  and  in  certain  cases,  as  in  those 
of  the  early  Christians  and  of  the  Reformers,  those  who  think 
with  Dr.  Johnson  believe  it  to  have  been  the  most  precious  gift 
which  could  be  bestowed  on  mankind.  That  the  authors  of 
such  splendid  benefits  should  be  requited  by  martyrdom ;  that 
their  reward  should  be  to  be  dealt  with  as  the  vilest  of  criminals, 
is  not,  upon  this  theory,  a  deplorable  error  and  misfortune,  for 
which  humanity  should  mourn  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  but  the 
normal  and  justifiable  state  of  things.  The  propounder  of  a 
new  truth,  according  to  this  doctrine,  should  stand,  as  stood,  in 
the  legislation  of  the  Locrians,  the  proposer  of  a  new  law,  with 
a  halter  round  his  neck,  to  be  instantly  tightened  if  the  public 
assembly  did  not,  on  hearing  his  reasons,  then  and  there  adopt 
his  proposition.  People  who  defend  this  mode  of  treating  bene- 
factors cannot  be  supposed  to  set  much  value  on  the  benefit ; 
and  I  believe  this  view  of  the  subject  is  mostly  confined  to  the 
sort  of  persons  who  think  that  new  truths  may  have  been  desir- 
able once,  but  that  we  have  had  enough  of  them  now. 

But,  indeed,  the  dictum  that  truth  always  triumphs  over  per- 
secution, is  one  of  those  pleasant  falsehoods  which  men  repeat 


112  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

after  one  another  till  they  pass  into  commonplaces,  but  which 
all  experience  refutes.  History  teems  with  instances  of  truth 
put  down  by  persecution.  If  not  suppressed  forever,  it  may  be 
thrown  back  for  centuries.  To  speak  only  of  rehgious  opinions : 
the  Reformation  broke  out  at  least  twenty  times  before  Luther, 
and  was  put  down.  Arnold  of  Brescia  was  put  down.  Fra  Dol- 
cino  was  put  down.  Savonarola  was  put  down.  The  Albigeois 
were  put  down.  The  Vaudois  were  put  down.  The  Lollards 
were  put  down.  The  Hussites  were  put  down.  Even  after  the 
era  of  Luther,  wherever  persecution  was  persisted  in,  it  was  suc- 
cessful. In  Spain,  Italy,  Flanders,  the  Austrian  empire.  Protes- 
tantism was  rooted  out ;  and,  most  likely,  would  have  been  so  in 
England,  had  Queen  Mary  lived,  or  Queen  Elizabeth  died.  Per- 
secution has  always  succeeded,  save  where  the  heretics  were  too 
strong  a  party  to  be  effectually  persecuted.  No  reasonable  per- 
son can  doubt  that  Christianity  might  have  been  extirpated  in 
the  Roman  Empire.  It  spread  and  became  predominant,  be- 
cause the  persecutions  were  only  occasional,  lasting  but  a  short 
time,  and  separated  by  long  intervals  of  almost  undisturbed 
propagandism.  It  is  a  piece  of  idle  sentimentality  that  truth, 
merely  as  truth,  has  any  inherent  power  denied  to  error,  of  pre- 
vailing against  the  dungeon  and  the  stake.  Men  are  not  more 
zealous  for  truth  than  they  often  are  for  error,  and  a  sufficient 
application  of  legal  or  even  of  social  penalties  will  generally  suc- 
ceed in  stopping  the  propagation  of  either.  The  real  advantage 
which  truth  has,  consists  in  this :  that  when  an  opinion  is  true, 
it  may  be  extinguished  once,  twice,  or  many  times,  but  in  the 
course  of  ages  there  will  generally  be  found  persons  to  rediscover 
it,  until  some  one  of  its  reappearances  falls  on  a  time  when  from 
favorable  circumstances  it  escapes  persecution  until  it  has  made 
such  head  as  to  withstand  all  subsequent  attempts  to  suppress  it. 
It  will  be  said  that  we  do  not  now  put  to  death  the  introducers 
of  new  opinions ;  we  are  not  like  our  fathers  who  slew  the  proph- 
ets, we  even  build  sepulchers  to  them.  It  is  true  we  no  longer 
put  heretics  to  death:  and  the  amount  of  penal  infliction  which 
modern  feeling  would  probably  tolerate,  even  against  the  most 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGH!    AND   DISCUSSION        113 

obnoxious  opinions,  is  not  sufficient  to  extirpate  them.  But  let 
us  not  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are  yet  free  from  the  stain  even 
of  legal  persecution.  Penalties  for  opinion,  or  at  least  for  its 
expression,  still  exist  by  law ;  and  their  enforcement  is  not,  even 
in  these  times,  so  unexampled  as  to  make  it  at  all  incredible  that 
they  may  some  day  be  revived  in  full  force.  In  the  year  1857, 
at  the  summer  assizes  of  the  county  of  Cornwall,  an  unfortunate 
man,  said  to  be  of  unexceptionable  conduct  in  all  relations  of 
life,  was  sentenced  to  twenty-one  months'  imprisonment,  for 
uttering,  and  writing  on  a  gate,  some  offensive  words  concern- 
ing Christianity.  Within  a  month  of  the  same  time,  at  the  Old 
Bailey,  two  persons,  on  two  separate  occasions,  were  rejected  as 
jurymen,  and  one  of  them  grossly  insvilted  by  the  judge  and  by 
one  of  the  counsel,  because  they  honestly  declared  that  they 
had  no  theological  belief ;  and  a  third,  a  foreigner,  for  the  same 
reason,  was  denied  justice  against  a  thief.  This  refusal  of  re- 
dress took  place  in  virtue  of  the  legal  doctrine,  that  no  person 
can  be  allowed  to  give  evidence  in  a  court  of  justice,  who  does 
not  profess  belief  in  a  God  (any  god  is  sufficient)  and  in  a  future 
state ;  which  is  equivalent  to  declaring  such  persons  to  be  out- 
laws, excluded  from  the  protection  of  the  tribunals ;  who  may 
not  only  be  robbed  or  assaulted  with  impunity,  if  no  one  but 
themselves,  or  persons  of  similar  opinions,  be  present,  but  any 
one  else  may  be  robbed  or  assaulted  with  impunity,  if  the  proof 
of  the  fact  depends  on  their  evidence.  The  assumption  on  which 
this  is  grounded  is  that  the  oath  is  worthless  of  a  person  who 
does  not  beheve  in  a  future  state ;  a  proposition  which  betokens 
much  ignorance  of  history  in  those  who  assent  to  it  (since  it 
is  historically  true  that  a  large  proportion  of  infidels  in  all  ages 
have  been  persons  of  distinguished  integrity  and  honor) ;  and 
would  be  maintained  by  no  one  who  had  the  smallest  conception 
how  many  of  the  persons  in  greatest  repute  with  the  world,  both 
for  virtues  and  for  attainments,  are  well  known,  at  least  to  their 
intimates,  to  be  unbelievers.  The  rule,  besides,  is  suicidal,  and 
cuts  away  its  own  foundation.  Under  pretense  that  atheists 
must  be  liars,  it  admits  the  testimony  of  all  atheists  who  are 


114  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

willing  to  lie,  and  rejects  only  those  who  brave  the  obloquy  of 
publicly  confessing  a  detested  creed  rather  than  afl5rm  a  false- 
hood. A  rule  thus  self-convicted  of  absurdity,  so  far  as  regards 
its  professed  purpose,  can  be  kept  in  force  only  as  a  badge  of 
hatred,  a  relic  of  persecution ;  a  persecution,  too,  having  the 
peculiarity  that  the  qualification  for  undergoing  it  is  the  being 
clearly  proved  not  to  deserve  it.  The  rule,  and  the  theory  it 
implies,  are  hardly  less  insulting  to  believers  than  to  infidels. 
For  if  he  who  does  not  believe  in  a  future  state  necessarily  lies, 
it  follows  that  they  who  do  believe  are  only  prevented  from  lying, 
if  prevented  they  are,  by  the  fear  of  hell.  We  will  not  do  the 
authors  and  abettors  of  the  rule  the  injury  of  supposing  that  the 
conception  which  they  have  formed  of  Christian  virtue  is  drawn 
from  their  own  consciousness. 

These,  indeed,  are  but  rags  and  remnants  of  persecution,  and 
may  be  thought  to  be  not  so  much  an  indication  of  the  wish  to 
persecute  as  an  example  of  that  very  frequent  infirmity  of  Eng- 
lish minds,  which  makes  them  take  a  preposterous  pleasure  in 
the  assertion  of  a  bad  principle,  when  they  are  no  longer  bad 
enough  to  desire  to  carry  it  really  into  practice.  But  unhappily 
there  is  no  security  in  the  state  of  the  public  mind  that  the  sus- 
pension of  worse  forms  of  legal  persecution,  which  has  lasted  for 
about  the  space  of  a  generation,  will  continue.  In  this  age  the 
quiet  surface  of  routine  is  as  often  ruffied  by  attempts  to  resus- 
citate past  evils,  as  to  introduce  new  benefits.  What  is  boasted 
of  at  the  present  time  as  the  revival  of  religion  is  always,  in 
narrow  and  uncultivated  minds,  at  least  as  much  the  revival  of 
bigotry ;  and  where  there  is  the  strong  permanent  leaven  of  in- 
tolerance in  the  feelings  of  a  people,  which  at  all  times  abides 
in  the  middle  classes  of  this  country,  it  needs  but  little  to  pro- 
voke them  into  actively  persecuting  those  whom  they  have  never 
ceased  to  think  proper  objects  of  persecution.  For  it  is  this: 
it  is  the  opinions  men  entertain,  and  the  feelings  they  cherish, 
respecting  those  who  disown  the  beliefs  they  deem  important, 
which  makes  this  country  not  a  place  of  mental  freedom.  For  a 
long  time  past,  the  chief  mischief  of  the  legal  penalties  is  that 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        115 

chey  strengthen  the  social  stigma.  It  is  that  stigma  which  is 
really  effective,  and  so  effective  is  it  that  the  profession  of  opin- 
ions which  are  under  the  law  of  society  is  much  less  common 
in  England  than  is,  in  many  other  countries,  the  avowal  of  those 
which  incur  risk  of  judicial  punishment.  In  respect  to  all  persons 
but  those  whose  pecuniary  circumstances  make  them  indepen- 
dent of  the  good  will  of  other  people,  opinion,  on  this  subject, 
is  as  efficacious  as  law ;  men  might  as  well  be  imprisoned,  as 
excluded  from  the  means  of  earning  their  bread.  Those  whose 
bread  is  already  secured,  and  who  desire  no  favors  from  men  in 
power,  or  from  bodies  of  men,  or  from  the  pubUc,  have  nothing 
to  fear  from  the  open  avowal  of  any  opinions,  but  to  be  ill- 
thought  of  and  ill-spoken  of,  and  this  it  ought  not  to  require 
a  very  heroic  mold  to  enable  them  to  bear.  There  is  no  room 
for  any  appeal  ad  misericordiam  ^  in  behalf  of  such  persons.  But 
though  we  do  not  now  inflict  so  much  evil  on  those  who  think 
differently  from  us,  as  it  was  formerly  our  custom  to  do,  it  may 
be  that  we  do  ourselves  as  much  evil  as  ever  by  our  treatment 
of  them.  Socrates  was  put  to  death,  but  the  Socratic  philosophy 
rose  like  the  sun  in  heaven,  and  spread  its  illumination  over  the 
whole  intellectual  firmament.  Christians  were  cast  to  the  lions, 
but  the  Christian  church  grew  up  a  stately  and  spreading  tree, 
overtopping  the  older  and  less  vigorous  growths,  and  stifling  them 
by  its  shade.  Our  merely  social  intolerance  kills  no  one,  roots 
out  no  opinions,  but  induces  men  to  disguise  them,  or  to  abstain 
from  any  active  effort  for  their  diffusion.  With  us,  heretical 
opinions  do  not  perceptibly  gain,  or  even  lose,  ground  in  each  dec- 
ade or  generation  ;  they  never  blaze  out  far  and  wide,  but  con- 
tinue to  smolder  in  the  narrow  circles  of  thinking  and  studious 
persons  among  whom  they  originate,  without  ever  lighting  up  the 
general  affairs  of  mankind  with  either  a  true  or  a  deceptive  light. 
And  thus  is  kept  up  a  state  of  things  very  satisfactory  to  some 
minds,  because,  without  the  unpleasant  process  of  fining  or  im- 
prisoning anybody,  it  maintains  all  prevailing  opinions  outwardly 
undisturbed,  while  it  does  not  absolutely  interdict  the  exercise  of 

^  To  sympathy.  —  Editors. 


ii6  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

reason  by  dissentients  afflicted  with  the  malady  of  thought.  A 
convenient  plan  for  having  peace  in  the  intellectual  world,  and 
keeping  all  things  going  on  therein  very  much  as  they  do  already. 
But  the  price  paid  for  this  sort  of  intellectual  pacification  is  the 
sacrifice  of  the  entire  moral  courage  of  the  human  mind.  A  state 
of  things  in  which  a  large  portion  of  the  most  active  and  inquir- 
ing intellects  find  it  advisable  to  keep  the  genuine  principles 
and  grounds  of  their  convictions  within  their  own  breasts,  and 
attempt,  in  what  they  address  to  the  public,  to  fit  as  much  as 
they  can  of  their  own  conclusions  to  premises  which  they  have 
internally  renounced,  cannot  send  forth  the  open,  fearless  char- 
acters, and  logical,  consistent  intellects  who  once  adorned  the 
thinking  world.  The  sort  of  men  who  can  be  looked  for  under 
it  are  either  mere  conformers  to  commonplace,  or  timeservers  for 
truth,  whose  arguments  on  all  great  subjects  are  meant  for  their 
hearers,  and  are  not  those  which  have  convinced  themselves. 
Those  who  avoid  this  alternative,  do  so  by  narrowing  their 
thoughts  and  interest  to  things  which  can  be  spoken  of  without 
venturing  within  the  region  of  principles  ;  that  is,  to  small  prac- 
tical matters,  which  would  come  right  of  themselves,  if  but  the 
minds  of  mankind  were  strengthened  and  enlarged,  and  which 
will  never  be  made  effectually  right  until  then;  while  that  which 
would  strengthen  and  enlarge  men's  minds,  free  and  daring 
speculation  on  the  highest  subjects,  is  abandoned. 

Those  in  whose  eyes  this  reticence  on  the  part  of  heretics  is 
no  evil,  should  consider  in  the  first  place  that  in  consequence  of 
it  there  is  never  any  fair  and  thorough  discussion  of  heretical 
opinions ;  and  that  such  of  them  as  could  not  stand  such  a  dis- 
cussion, though  they  may  be  prevented  from  spreading,  do  not 
disappear.  But  it  is  not  the  minds  of  heretics  that  are  deterio- 
rated most,  by  the  ban  placed  on  all  inquiry  which  does  not  end 
in  the  orthodox  conclusions.  The  greatest  harm  done  is  to  those 
who  are  not  heretics,  and  whose  whole  mental  development  is 
cramped,  and  their  reason  cowed,  by  the  fear  of  heresy.  Who 
can  compute  what  the  world  loses  in  the  multitude  of  promis- 
ing intellects  combined  with  timid  characters,  who  dare  not  fol- 


LIBERTY    OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        117 

low  out  any  bold,  vigorous,  independent  train  of  thought,  lest 
it  should  land  them  in  something  which  would  admit  of  being 
considered  irreligious  or  immoral  ?  Among  them  we  may  occa- 
sionally see  some  man  of  deep  conscientiousness,  and  subtle  and 
refined  understanding,  who  spends  a  life  in  sophisticating  with 
an  intellect  which  he  cannot  silence,  and  exhausts  the  resources 
of  ingenuity  in  attempting  to  reconcile  the  promptings  of  his 
conscience  and  reason  with  orthodoxy,  which  yet  he  does  not, 
perhaps,  to  the  end  succeed  in  doing.  No  one  can  be  a  great 
thinker  who  does  not  recognize  that  as  a  thinker  it  is  his  first 
duty  to  follow  his  intellect  to  whatever  conclusions  it  may  lead. 
Truth  gains  more  even  by  the  errors  of  one  who,  with  due  study 
and  preparation,  thinks  for  himself,  than  by  the  true  opinions  of 
those  who  only  hold  them  because  they  do  not  suffer  themselves 
to  think.  Not  that  it  is  solely,  or  chiefly,  to  form  great  thinkers, 
that  freedom  of  thinking  is  required.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  as 
much,  and  even  more  indispensable,  to  enable  average  human 
beings  to  attain  the  mental  stature  which  they  are  capable  of. 
There  have  been,  and  may  again  be,  great  individual  thinkers,  in 
a  general  atmosphere  of  mental  slavery.  But  there  never  has 
been,  nor  ever  will  be,  in  that  atmosphere,  an  intellectually  active 
people.  Where  any  people  has  made  a  temporary  approach  to 
such  a  character,  it  has  been  because  the  dread  of  heterodox 
speculation  was  for  a  time  suspended.  Where  there  is  a  tacit 
convention  that  principles  are  not  to  be  disputed ;  where  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  greatest  questions  which  can  occupy  humanity 
is  considered  to  be  closed,  we  cannot  hope  to  find  that  generally 
high  scale  of  mental  activity  which  has  made  some  periods  of  his- 
tory so  remarkable.  Never  when  controversy  avoided  the  sub- 
jects which  are  large  and  important  enough  to  kindle  enthusiasm 
was  the  mind  of  a  people  stirred  up  from  its  foundations,  and 
the  impulse  given  which  raised  even  persons  of  the  most  ordinary 
intellect  to  something  of  the  dignity  of  thinking  beings.  Of  such 
we  have  had  an  example  in  the  condition  of  Europe  during  the 
tim.es  immediately  following  the  Reformation ;  another,  though 
limited  to  the  Continent  and  to  a  more  cultivg,ted  class,  in  the 


Ii8  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

speculative  movement  of  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury ;  and  a  third,  of  still  briefer  duration,  in  the  intellectual 
fermentation  of  Germany  during  the  Goethian  and  Fichtean 
period.  These  periods  differed  widely  in  the  particular  opinions 
which  they  developed ;  but  were  alike  in  this,  that  during  all 
three  the  yoke  of  authority  was  broken.  In  each,  an  old  mental 
despotism  had  been  thrown  off,  and  no  new  one  had  yet  taken 
its  place.  The  impulse  given  at  these  three  periods  has  made 
Europe  what  it  now  is.  Every  single  improvement  which  has 
taken  place  either  in  the  human  mind  or  in  institutions,  may  be 
traced  distinctly,  to  one  or  other  of  them.  Appearances  have  for 
some  time  indicated  that  all  three  impulses  are  well  nigh  spent ; 
and  we  can  expect  no  fresh  start,  until  we  again  assert  our  mental 
freedom. 

Let  us  now  pass  to  the  second  division  of  the  argument,  and 
dismissing  the  supposition  that  any  of  the  received  opinions  may 
be  false,  let  us  assume  them  to  be  true,  and  examine  into  the 
worth  of  the  manner  in  which  they  are  likely  to  be  held,  when 
their  truth  is  not  freely  and  openly  canvassed.  However  un- 
willingly a  person  who  has  a  strong  opinion  may  admit  the  pos- 
sibility that  his  opinion  may  be  false,  he  ought  to  be  moved  by 
the  consideration  that  however  true  it  may  be,  if  it  is  not  fully, 
frequently,  and  fearlessly  discussed,  it  will  be  held  as  a  dead 
dogma,  not  a  living  truth. 

There  is  a  class  of  persons  (happily  not  quite  so  numerous  as 
formerly)  who  think  it  enough  if  a  person  assents  undoubtingly 
to  what  they  think  true,  though  he  has  no  knowledge  whatever  of 
the  grounds  of  the  opinion,  and  could  not  make  a  tenable  defense 
of  it  against  the  most  superficial  objections.  Such  persons,  if 
they  can  once  get  their  creed  taught  from  authority,  naturally 
think  that  no  good,  and  some  harm,  comes  of  its  being  allowed  to 
be  questioned.  Where  their  influence  prevails,  they  make  it 
nearly  impossible  for  the  received  opinion  to  be  rejected  wisely 
and  considerately,  though  it  may  still  be  rejected  rashly  and  ig- 
norantly ;  for  to  shut  out  discussion  entirely  is  seldom  possible, 
and  when  it  once  gets  in,  beliefs  not  grounded  on  conviction  are 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION       119 

apt  to  give  way  before  the  slightest  semblance  of  an  argument. 
Waiving,  however,  this  possibility,  —  assuming  that  the  true  opin- 
ion abides  in  the  mind,  but  abides  as  a  prejudice,  a  belief  inde- 
pendent of,  and  proof  against,  argument,  —  this  is  not  the  way  in 
which  truth  ought  to  be  held  by  a  rational  being.  This  is  not 
knowing  the  truth.  Truth,  thus  held,  is  but  one  superstition 
the  more,  accidentally  clinging  to  the  words  which  enunciate  a 
truth. 

If  the  intellect  and  judgment  of  mankind  ought  to  be  culti- 
vated, a  thing  which  Protestants  at  least  do  not  deny,  on  what  can 
these  faculties  be  more  appropriately  exercised  by  any  one  than 
on  the  things  which  concern  him  so  much  that  it  is  considered 
necessary  for  him  to  hold  opinions  on  them  ?  If  the  cultivation 
of  the  understanding  consists  in  one  thing  more  than  in  another, 
it  is  surely  in  learning  the  grounds  of  one's  own  opinions.  What- 
ever people  believe  on  subjects  on  which  it  is  of  the  first  impor- 
tance to  believe  rightly,  they  ought  to  be  able  to  defend  against 
at  least  the  common  objections.  But,  some  one  may  say,  "Let 
them  be  taught  the  grounds  of  their  opinions.  It  does  not  follow 
that  opinions  must  be  merely  parroted  because  they  are  never 
heard  controverted.  Persons  who  learn  geometry  do  not  simply 
commit  the  theorems  to  memory,  but  understand  and  learn  like- 
wise the  demonstrations ;  and  it  would  be  absurd  to  say  that  they 
remain  ignorant  of  the  grounds  of  geometrical  truths,  because 
they  never  hear  any  one  deny,  and  attempt  to  disprove  them." 
Undoubtedly :  and  such  teaching  suffices  on  a  subject  like  math- 
ematics, where  there  is  nothing  at  all  to  be  said  on  the  wrong 
side  of  the  question.  The  peculiarity  of  the  evidence  of  math- 
ematical truths  is,  that  all  the  argument  is  on  one  side.  There 
are  no  objections,  and  no  answers  to  objections.  But  on  every 
subject  on  which  difference  of  opinion  is  possible,  the  truth  de- 
pends on  a  balance  to  be  struck  between  two  sets  of  conflicting 
reasons.  Even  in  natural  philosophy  there  is  always  some  other 
explanation  possible  of  the  same  facts ;  some  geocentric  theory 
instead  of  heliocentric,  some  phlogiston  instead  of  oxygen ;  and 
it  has  to  be  shown  why  that  other  theory  cannot  be  the  true  one; 


120  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

and  until  this  is  shown,  and  until  we  know  how  it  is  shown,  we  do 
not  understand  the  grounds  of  our  opinion.  But  when  we  turn 
to  subjects  infinitely  more  complicated  —  to  morals,  religion, 
politics,  social  relations,  and  the  business  of  life  —  three  fourths 
of  the  arguments  for  every  disputed  opinion  consist  in  dispelling 
the  appearances  which  favor  some  opinion  different  from  it.  The 
greatest  orator,  save  one,  of  antiquity,  has  left  it  on  record  that 
he  always  studied  his  adversary's  case  with  as  great,  if  not  with 
still  greater,  intensity  than  even  his  own.  What  Cicero  practiced 
as  the  means  of  forensic  success,  requires  to  be  imitated  by  all 
who  study  any  subject  in  order  to  arrive  at  the  truth.  He  who 
knows  only  his  own  side  of  the  case  knows  little  of  that.  His 
reasons  may  be  good,  and  no  one  may  have  been  able  to  refute 
them.  But  if  he  is  equally  unable  to  refute  the  reasons  on  the 
opposite  side ;  if  he  does  not  so  much  as  know  what  they  are,  he 
has  no  ground  for  preferring  either  opinion.  The  rational  posi- 
tion for  him  would  be  suspension  of  judgment,  and  unless  he  con- 
tents himself  with  that,  he  is  either  led  by  authority,  or  adopts, 
like  the  generality  of  the  world,  the  side  to  which  he  feels  most 
inclination.  Nor  is  it  enough  that  he  should  hear  the  arguments 
of  adversaries  from  his  own  teachers,  presented  as  they  state 
them,  and  accompanied  by  what  they  offer  as  refutations.  That 
is  not  the  way  to  do  justice  to  the  arguments,  or  bring  them  into 
real  contact  with  his  own  mind.  He  must  be  able  to  hear  them 
from  persons  who  actually  believe  them ;  who  defend  them  in 
earnest,  and  do  their  very  utmost  for  them.  He  must  know 
them  in  their  most  plausible  and  persuasive  form ;  he  must  feel 
the  whole  force  of  the  difficulty  which  the  true  view  of  the  sub- 
ject has  to  encounter  and  dispose  of ;  else  he  will  never  really 
possess  himself  of  the  portion  of  truth  which  meets  and  removes 
that  difficulty.  Ninety-nine  in  a  hundred  of  what  are  called 
educated  men  are  in  this  condition  ;  even  of  those  who  can  argue 
fluently  for  their  opinions.  Their  conclusion  may  be  true,  but 
it  might  be  false  for  anything  they  know ;  they  have  never 
thrown  themselves  into  the  mental  position  of  those  who  think 
differently  from  them,  and  considered  what  such  persons  may 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        121 

have  to  say ;  and  consequently  they  do  not.  in  any  proper  sense 
of  the  word,  know  the  doctrine  which  they  themselves  profess. 
They  do  not  know  those  parts  of  it  which  explain  and  justify 
the  remainder ;  the  considerations  which  show  that  a  fact  which 
seemingly  conflicts  with  another  is  reconcilable  with  it,  or  that 
of  two  apparently  strong  reasons,  one  and  not  the  other  ought 
to  be  preferred.  All  that  part  of  the  truth  which  turns  the 
scale  and  decides  the  judgment  of  a  completely  informed  mind, 
they  are  strangers  to ;  nor  is  it  ever  really  known,  but  to  those 
who  have  attended  equally  and  impartially  to  both  sides,  and 
endeavored  to  see  the  reasons  of  both  in  the  strongest  light. 
So  essential  is  this  discipline  to  a  real  understanding  of  moral 
and  human  subjects,  that  if  opponents  of  all  important  truths 
do  not  exist,  it  is  indispensable  to  imagine  them,  and  supply 
them  with  the  strongest  arguments  which  the  most  skillful  devil's 
advocate  can  conjure  up. 

To  abate  the  force  of  these  considerations,  an  enemy  of  free 
discussion  may  be  supposed  to  say  that  there  is  no  necessity  for 
mankind  in  general  to  know  and  understand  all  that  can  be  said 
against  or  for  their  opinions  by  philosophers  and  theologians. 
That  it  is  not  needfiil  for  common  men  to  be  able  to  expose  all 
the  misstatements  or  fallacies  of  an  ingenious  opponent.  That 
it  is  enough  if  there  is  always  somebody  capable  of  answering 
them,  so  that  nothing  likely  to  mislead  uninstructed  persons 
remains  unrefuted.  That  simple  minds,  having  been  taught  the 
obvious  grounds  of  the  truths  inculcated  on  them,  may  trust  to 
authority  for  the  rest,  and  being  aware  that  they  have  neither 
knowledge  nor  talent  to  resolve  every  difficulty  which  can  be 
raised,  may  repose  in  the  assurance  that  all  those  which  have 
been  raised  have  been  or  can  be  answered,  by  those  who  are  spe- 
cially trained  to  the  task. 

Conceding  to  this  view  of  the  subject  the  utmost  that  can  be 
claimed  for  it  by  those  most  easily  satisfied  with  the  amount  of 
understanding  of  truth  which  ought  to  accompany  the  belief  of 
it ;  even  so,  the  argument  for  free  discussion  is  no  way  weakened. 
For  even  this  doctrine  acknowledges  that  mankind  ought  to  have 


122  JOHN   STUART   MILL 

a  rational  assurance  that  all  objections  have  been  satisfactorily 
answered ;  and  how  are  they  to  be  answered  if  that  which  re- 
quires to  be  answered  is  not  spoken  ?  or  how  can  the  answer  be 
known  to  be  satisfactory  if  the  objectors  have  no  opportunity 
of  showing  that  it  is  unsatisfactory  ?  If  not  the  public,  at  least 
the  philosophers  and  theologians  who  are  to  resolve  the  difficul- 
ties, must  make  themselves  familiar  with  those  difficulties  in  their 
most  puzzling  form;  and  this  cannot  be  accomplished  unless 
they  are  freely  stated  and  placed  in  the  most  advantageous  light 
which  they  admit  of.  The  Catholic  Church  has  its  own  way  of 
dealing  with  this  embarrassing  problem.  It  makes  a  broad 
separation  between  those  who  can  be  permitted  to  receive  its 
doctrines  on  conviction  and  those  who  must  accept  them  on 
trust.  Neither,  indeed,  are  allowed  any  choice  as  to  what  they 
will  accept ;  but  the  clergy,  such  at  least  as  can  be  fully  confided 
in,  may  admissibly  and  meritoriously  make  themselves  ac- 
quainted with  the  arguments  of  opponents,  in  order  to  answer 
them,  and  may,  therefore,  read  heretical  books ;  the  laity,  not 
unless  by  special  permission,  hard  to  be  obtained.  This  disci- 
pline recognizes  knowledge  of  the  enemy's  case  as  beneficial  to 
the  teachers,  but  finds  means,  consistent  with  this,  of  denying 
it  to  the  rest  of  the  world ;  thus  giving  to  the  elite  more  mental 
culture,  though  not  more  mental  freedom,  than  it  allows  to  the 
mass.  By  this  device  it  succeeds  in  obtaining  the  kind  of  mental 
superiority  which  its  purposes  require ;  for  though  culture  with- 
out freedom  never  made  a  large  and  liberal  mind,  it  can  make  a 
clever  nisi  prius  advocate  of  a  cause.  But  in  countries  profess- 
ing Protestantism  this  resource  is  denied ;  since  Protestants 
hold,  at  least  in  theory,  that  the  responsibility  for  the  choice  of 
a  religion  must  be  borne  each  for  himself,  and  cannot  be  thrown 
off  upon  teachers.  Besides,  in  the  present  state  of  the  world, 
it  is  practically  impossible  that  writings  which  are  read  by  the 
instructed  can  be  kept  from  the  uninstructed.  If  the  teachers 
of  mankind  are  to  be  cognizant  of  all  that  they  ought  to  know, 
everything  must  be  free  to  be  written  and  published  without 
restraint. 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        123 

If,  however,  the  mischievous  operation  of  the  absence  of  free 
discussion,  when  the  received  opinions  are  true,  were  confined 
to  leaving  men  ignorant  of  the  grounds  of  those  opinions,  it 
might  be  thought  that  this,  if  an  intellectual  is  no  moral  evil, 
and  does  not  affect  the  worth  of  the  opinions,  regarded  in  their 
influence  on  the  character.  The  fact,  however,  is  that  not  only 
the  grounds  of  the  opinion  are  forgotten  in  the  absence  of  discus- 
sion, but  too  often  the  meaning  of  the  opinion  itself.  The  words 
which  convey  it  cease  to  suggest  ideas,  or  suggest  only  a  small 
portion  of  those  they  were  originally  employed  to  communicate. 
Instead  of  a  vivid  conception  and  a  living  belief,  there  remain 
only  a  few  phrases  retained  by  rote ;  or,  if  any  part,  the  shell 
and  husk  only  of  the  meaning  is  retained,  the  finer  essence  being 
lost.  The  great  chapter  in  human  history  which  this  fact  occu- 
pies and  fills  cannot  be  too  earnestly  studied  and  meditated  on. 

It  is  illustrated  in  the  experience  of  almost  all  ethical  doctrines 
and  religious  creeds.  They  are  all  full  of  meaning  and  vitality 
to  those  who  originate  them,  and  to  the  direct  disciples  of  the 
originators.  Their  meaning  continues  to  be  felt  in  undiminished 
strength,  and  is  perhaps  brought  out  into  even  fuller  conscious- 
ness, so  long  as  the  struggle  lasts  to  give  the  doctrine  or  creed 
an  ascendancy  over  other  creeds.  At  last  it  either  prevails,  and 
becomes  the  general  opinion,  or  its  progress  stops ;  it  keeps  pos- 
session of  the  ground  it  has  gained,  but  ceases  to  spread  further. 
When  either  of  these  results  has  become  apparent,  controversy 
on  the  subject  flags,  and  gradually  dies  away.  The  doctrine  has 
taken  its  place,  if  not  as  a  received  opinion,  as  one  of  the  ad- 
mitted sects  or  divisions  of  opinion;  those  who  hold  it  have 
generally  inherited,  not  adopted  it ;  and  conversion  from  one  of 
these  doctrines  to  another,  being  now  an  exceptional  fact,  occu- 
pies little  place  in  the  thoughts  of  their  professors.  Instead  of 
being,  as  at  first,  constantly  on  the  alert  either  to  defend  them- 
selves against  the  world,  or  to  bring  the  world  over  to  them, 
they  have  subsided  into  acquiescence,  and  neither  listen,  when 
they  can  help  it,  to  arguments  against  their  creed,  nor  trouble 
dissentients   (if  there  be  such)    with  arguments  in  its  favor. 


124  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

From  this  time  may  usually  be  dated  the  decline  in  the  living 
power  of  the  doctrine.  We  often  hear  the  teachers  of  all  creeds 
lamenting  the  difl&culty  of  keeping  up  in  the  minds  of  believers 
a  lively  apprehension  of  the  truth  which  they  nominally  recog- 
nize, so  that  it  may  penetrate  the  feelings,  and  acquire  a  real 
mastery  over  the  conduct.  No  such  difficulty  is  complained  of 
while  the  creed  is  still  fighting  for  its  existence;  even  the  weaker 
combatants  then  know  and  feel  what  they  are  fighting  for,  and 
the  difference  between  it  and  other  doctrines ;  in  that  period  of 
every  creed's  existence,  not  a  few  persons  may  be  found  who 
have  realized  its  fundamental  principles  in  all  the  forms  of 
thought,  have  weighed  and  considered  them  in  all  their  important 
bearings,  and  have  experienced  the  full  effect  on  the  character 
which  belief  in  that  creed  ought  to  produce  in  a  mind  thoroughly 
imbued  with  it.  But  when  it  has  come  to  be  an  hereditary  creed, 
and  to  be  received  passively,  not  actively  ;  —  when  the  mind  is 
no  longer  compelled,  in  the  same  degree  as  at  first,  to  exercise 
its  vital  powers  on  the  questions  which  its  belief  presents  to  it, 
there  is  a  progressive  tendency  to  forget  all  of  the  belief  except 
the  formularies,  or  to  give  it  a  dull  and  torpid  assent,  as  if  ac- 
cepting it  on  trust  dispenses  with  the  necessity  of  realizing  it  in 
consciousness,  or  testing  it  by  personal  experience;  until  it  al- 
most ceases  to  connect  itself  at  all  with  the  inner  life  of  the  hu- 
man being.  Then  are  seen  the  cases,  so  frequent  in  this  age 
of  the  world  as  almost  to  form  the  majority,  in  which  the  creed 
remains,  as  it  were,  outside  the  mind,  incrusting  and  petrifying 
it  against  all  other  influences  addressed  to  the  higher  parts  of 
our  nature ;  manifesting  its  power  by  not  suffering  any  fresh  and 
living  conviction  to  get  in,  but  itself  doing  nothing  for  the  mind 
or  heart,  except  standing  sentinel  over  them  to  keep  them 
vacant. 

To  what  an  extent  doctrines  intrinsically  fitted  to  make  the 
deepest  impression  upon  the  mind  may  remain  in  it  as  dead 
beliefs,  without  being  ever  realized  in  the  imagination,  the  feel- 
ings, or  the  understanding,  is  exemplified  by  the  manner  in 
which  the  majority  of  believers  hold  the  doctrines  of  Christianity. 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND    DISCUSSION        125 

By  Christianity  I  here  mean  what  is  accounted  such  by  all 
churches  and  sects  —  the  maxims  and  precepts  contained  in  the 
New  Testament.  These  are  considered  sacred,  and  accepted  as 
laws,  by  all  professing  Christians.  Yet  it  is  scarcely  too  much 
to  say  that  not  one  Christian  in  a  thousand  guides  or  tests  his 
individual  conduct  by  reference  to  those  laws.  The  standard 
to  which  he  does  refer  it  is  the  custom  of  his  nation,  his  class, 
or  his  religious  profession.  He  has  thus,  on  the  one  hand,  a  col- 
lection of  ethical  maxims,  which  he  believes  to  have  been  vouch- 
safed to  him  by  infallible  wisdom  as  rules  for  his  government; 
and  on  the  other,  a  set  of  everyday  judgments  and  practices, 
which. go  a  certain  length  with  some  of  those  maxims,  not  so 
great  a  length  with  others,  stand  in  direct  opposition  to  some, 
and  are,  on  the  whole,  a  compromise  between  the  Christian 
creed  and  the  interests  and  suggestions  of  worldly  life.  To  the 
first  of  these  standards  he  gives  his  homage ;  to  the  other  his 
real  allegiance.  All  Christians  believe  that  the  blessed  are  the 
poor  and  humble,  and  those  who  are  ill-used  by  the  world ;  that 
it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than 
for  a  rich  man  to  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven ;  that  they  should 
judge  not,  lest  they  should  be  judged ;  that  they  should  swear 
not  at  all ;  that  they  should  love  their  neighbor  as  themselves ; 
that  if  one  take  their  cloak,  they  should  give  him  their  coat 
also;  that  they  should  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow;  that 
if  they  would  be  perfect,  they  should  sell  all  that  they  have  and 
give  it  to  the  poor.  They  are  not  insincere  when  they  say  that 
they  believe  these  things.  They  do  believe  them,  as  people  be- 
lieve what  they  have  always  heard  lauded  and  never  discussed. 
But  in  the  sense  of  that  living  belief  which  regulates  conduct, 
they  believe  these  doctrines  just  up  to  the  point  to  which  it  is 
usual  to  act  upon  them.  The  doctrines  in  their  integrity  are 
serviceable  to  pelt  adversaries  with ;  and  it  is  understood  that 
they  are  to  be  put  forward  (when  possible)  as  the  reasons  for 
whatever  people  do  that  they  think  laudable.  But  any  one  who 
reminded  them  that  the  maxims  require  an  infinity  of  things 
which  they  never  even  think  of  doing,  would  gain  nothing  but  to 


126  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

be  classed  among  those  very  unpopular  characters  who  affect 
to  be  better  than  other  people.  The  doctrines  have  no  hold  on 
ordinary  believers  —  are  not  a  power  in  their  minds.  They  have 
an  habitual  respect  for  the  sound  of  them,  but  no  feehng  which 
spreads  from  the  words  to  the  things  signified,  and  forces  the  mind 
to  take  them  in,  and  make  them  conform  to  the  formula.  When- 
ever conduct  is  concerned,  they  look  round  for  Mr.  A  and  B  to 
direct  them  how  far  to  go  in  obeying  Christ. 

Now  we  may  be  well  assured  that  the  case  was  not  thus,  but 
far  otherwise,  with  the  early  Christians.  Had  it  been  thus,  Chris- 
tianity never  would  have  expanded  from  an  obscure  sect  of  the 
despised  Hebrews  into  the  religion  of  the  Roman  Empire..  When 
their  enemies  said,  "See  how  these  Christians  love  one  another" 
(a  remark  not  likely  to  be  made  by  anybody  now),  they  assuredly 
had  a  much  livelier  feeling  of  the  meaning  of  their  creed  than  they 
have  ever  had  since.  And  to  this  cause,  probably,  it  is  chiefly  ow- 
ing that  Christianity  now  makes  so  little  progress  in  extending  its 
domain,  and,  after  eighteen  centuries,  is  still  nearly  confined  to 
Europeans  and  the  descendants  of  Europeans.  Even  with  the 
strictly  rehgious,  who  are  much  in  earnest  about  their  doctrines, 
and  attach  a  greater  amount  of  meaning  to  many  of  them  than 
people  in  general,  it  commonly  happens  that  the  part  which  is 
thus  comparatively  active  in  their  minds  is  that  which  was  made 
by  Calvin,  or  Knox,  or  some  such  person  much  nearer  in  character 
to  themselves.  The  sayings  of  Christ  coexist  passively  in  their 
minds,  producing  hardly  any  effect  beyond  what  is  caused  by 
mere  listening  to  words  too  amiable  and  bland.  There  are  many 
reasons,  doubtless,  why  doctrines  which  are  the  badge  of  a  sect  re- 
tain more  of  their  vitality  than  those  common  to  all  recognized 
sects,  and  why  more  pains  are  taken  by  teachers  to  keep  their 
meaning  alive ;  but  one  reason  certainly  is,  that  the  peculiar 
doctrines  are  more  questioned,  and  have  to  be  oftener  defended 
against  open  gainsayers.  Both  teachers  and  learners  go  to  sleep 
at  their  post,  as  soon  as  there  is  no  enemy  in  the  field. 

The  same  thing  holds  true,  generally  speaking,  of  all  traditional 
doctrines  —  those  of  prudence  and  knowledge  of  life,  as  well  as  of 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        127 

morals  or  religion.  All  languages  and  literatures  are  full  of  gen- 
eral observations  on  life,  both  as  to  what  it  is,  and  how  to  conduct 
one's  self  in  it;  observations  which  everybody  knows,  which 
everybody  repeats,  or  hears  with  acquiescence,  which  are  received 
as  truisms,  yet  of  which  most  people  first  truly  learn  the  meaning, 
when  experience,  generally  of  a  painful  kind,  has  made  it  a  real- 
ity to  them.  How  often,  when  smarting  under  some  unforeseen 
misfortune  or  disappointment,  does  a  person  call  to  mind  some 
proverb  or  common  saying  familiar  to  him  all  his  life,  the  mean- 
ing of  which,  if  he  had  ever  before  felt  it  as  he  does  now,  would 
have  saved  him  from  the  calamity.  There  are,  indeed,  reasons 
for  this  other  than  the  absence  of  discussion ;  there  are  many 
truths  of  which  the  full  meaning  cannot  be  realized  until  per- 
sonal experience  has  brought  it  home.  But  much  more  of  the 
meaning  even  of  these  would  have  been  understood,  and  what 
was  understood  would  have  been  far  more  deeply  impressed  on 
the  mind,  if  the  man  had  been  accustomed  to  hear  it  argued  pro 
and  con  by  people  who  did  understand  it.  The  fatal  tendency  of 
mankind  to  leave  off  thinking  about  a  thing  when  it  is  no  longer 
doubtful  is  the  cause  of  half  their  errors.  A  contemporary 
author  has  well  spoken  of  "the  deep  slumber  of  a  decided 
opinion." 

But  what !  (it  may  be  asked)  Is  the  absence  of  unanimity  an 
indispensable  condition  of  true  knowledge  ?  Is  it  necessary  that 
some  part  of  mankind  should  persist  in  error,  to  enable  any  to 
realize  the  truth?  Does  a  belief  cease  to  be  real  and  vital  as 
soon  as  it  is  generally  received  —  and  is  a  proposition  never 
thoroughly  understood  and  felt  unless  some  doubt  of  it  remains  ? 
As  soon  as  mankind  have  unanimously  accepted  a  truth,  does 
the  truth  perish  within  them  ?  The  highest  aim  and  best  result 
of  improved  intelligence,  it  has  hitherto  been  thought,  is  to  unite 
mankind  more  and  more  in  the  acknowledgment  of  all  important 
truths  :  and  does  the  intelligence  only  last  as  long  as  it  has  not 
achieved  its  object  ?  Do  the  fruits  of  conquest  perish  by  the 
very  completeness  of  the  victory? 

I  affirm  no  such  thing.     As  mankind  improve,  the  number 


128  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

of  doctrines  which  are  no  longer  disputed  or  doubted  will  be 
constantly  on  the  increase  :  and  the  well-being  of  mankind  may 
almost  be  measured  by  the  number  and  gravity  of  the  truths 
which  have  reached  the  point  of  being  uncontested.  The  cessa- 
tion, on  one  question  after  another,  of  serious  controversy,  is  one 
of  the  necessary  incidents  of  the  consolidation  of  opinion ;  a  con- 
solidation as  salutary  in  the  case  of  true  opinions,  as  it  is  dan- 
gerous and  noxious  when  the  opinions  are  erroneous.  But 
though  this  gradual  narrowing  of  the  bounds  of  diversity  of 
opinion  is  necessary  in  both  senses  of  the  term,  being  at  once 
inevitable  and  indispensable,  we  are  not  therefore  obliged  to  con- 
clude that  all  its  consequences  must  be  beneficial.  The  loss  of 
so  important  an  aid  to  the  intelligent  and  living  apprehension 
of  a  truth  as  is  afforded  by  the  necessity  of  explaining  it  to,  oi 
defending  it  against,  opponents,  though  not  sufficient  to  out- 
weigh, is  no  trifling  drawback  from,  the  benefit  of  its  universal 
recognition.  Where  this  advantage  can  no  longer  be  had,  I  con- 
fess I  should  Uke  to  see  the  teachers  of  mankind  endeavoring  to 
provide  a  substitute  for  it;  some  contrivance  for  making  the 
difficulties  of  the  question  as  present  to  the  learner's  conscious- 
ness as  if  they  were  pressed  upon  him  by  a  dissentient  championj 
eager  for  his  conversion. 

But  instead  of  seeking  contrivances  for  this  purpose,  they  have 
lost  those  they  formerly  had.  The  Socratic  dialectics,  so  mag- 
nificently exemplified  in  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  were  a  contri- 
vance of  this  description.  They  were  essentially  a  negative 
discussion  of  the  great  questions  of  philosophy  and  life,  directed 
with  consummate  skill  to  the  purpose  of  convincing  any  one  who 
had  merely  adopted  the  commonplaces  of  received  opinion,  that 
he  did  not  understand  the  subject  —  that  he  as  yet  attached  no 
definite  meaning  to  the  doctrines  he  professed ;  in  order  that, 
becoming  aware  of  his  ignorance,  he  might  be  put  in  the  way  to 
attain  a  stable  belief,  resting  on  a  clear  apprehension  both  of  the 
meaning  of  doctrines  and  of  their  evidence.  The  school  disputa- 
tions of  the  Middle  Ages  had  a  somewhat  similar  object.  They 
were  intended  to  make  sure  that  the  pupil  understood  his  own 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        129 

opinion  and  (by  necessary  correlation)  the  opinion  opposed  to  it, 
and  could  enforce  the  grounds  of  the  one  and  confute  those  of 
the  other.     These  last-mentioned  contests  had,  indeed,  the  incur- 
able defect  that  the  premises  appealed  to  were  taken  from  au- 
thority, not  from  reason ;  and,  as  a  disciphne  to  the  mind,  they 
were  in  every  respect  inferior  to  the  powerful  dialectics  which 
formed  the  intellects  of  the  "  Socratici  viri:"  but  the  modern 
mind  owes  far  more  to  both  than  it  is  generally  willing  to  admit, 
and  the  present  modes  of  education  contain  nothing  which  in 
the  smallest  degree  suppUes  the  place  either  of  the  one  or  of  the 
other.     A  person  who  derives  all  his  instruction  from  teachers 
or  books,  even  if  he  escape  the  besetting  temptation  of  content- 
ing himself  with  cram,  is  under  no  compulsion  to   hear  both 
sides ;   accordingly,  it  is  far  from  a  frequent  accomplishment, 
even  among  thinkers,  to  know  both  sides ;  and  the  weakest  part  of 
what  everybody  says  in  defense  of  his  opinion  is  what  he  intends 
as  a  reply  to  antagonists.     It  is  the  fashion  of  the  present  time  to 
disparage  negative  logic  —  that  which  points  out  weaknesses  in 
theory  or  errors  in  practice  without  estabhshing  positive  truths. 
Such  negative  criticism  would,  indeed,  be  poor  enough  as  an  ulti- 
mate result ;  but  as  a  means  to  attaining  any  positive  knowledge 
or  conviction  worthy  the  name,  it  cannot  be  valued  too  highly ; 
and  until  people  are  again  systematically  trained  to  it,  there  will 
be  few  great  thinkers  and  a  low  general  average  of  intellect,  in 
any  but  the  mathematical  and  physical  departments  of  specula- 
tion.    On  any  other  subject  no  one's  opinions  deserve  the  name 
of  knowledge,  except  so  far  as  he  has  either  had  forced  upon  him 
by  others,  or  gone  through  of  himself,  the  same  mental  process 
which  would  have  been  required  of  him  in  carrying  on  an  active 
controversy  with  opponents.     That,  therefore,  which  when  ab- 
sent, it  is  so  indispensable,  but  so  difficult,  to  create,  how  worse 
than  absurd  is  it  to  forego,  when  spontaneously  offering  itself ! 
If  there  are  any  persons  who  contest  a  received  opinion,  or  who 
wiU  do  so  if  law  or  opinion  will  let  them,  let  us  thank  them  for  it, 
open  our  minds  to  Hsten  to  them,  and  rejoice  that  there  is  some 
one  to  do  for  us  what  we  otherwise  ought,  if  we  have  any  regard 


I30  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

for  either  the  certainty  or  the  vitality  of  our  convictions,  to  do 
with  much  greater  labor  for  ourselves. 

It  still  remains  to  speak  of  one  of  the  principal  causes  which 
make  diversity  of  opinion  advantageous,  and  will  continue  to  do 
so  until  mankind  shall  have  entered  a  stage  of  intellectual  ad- 
vancement which  at  present  seems  at  an  incalculable  distance. 
We  have  hitherto  considered  only  two  possibihties :  that  the 
received  opinion  may  be  false,  and  some  other  opinion,  conse- 
quently, true ;  or  that,  the  received  opinion  being  true,  a  con- 
flict with  the  opposite  error  is  essential  to  a  clear  apprehension 
and  deep  feeUng  of  its  truth.  But  there  is  a  commoner  case  than 
either  of  these ;  when  the  conflicting  doctrines,  instead  of  being 
one  true  and  the  other  false,  share  the  truth  between  them ;  and 
the  nonconforming  opinion  is  needed  to  supply  the  remainder  of 
the  truth,  of  which  the  received  doctrine  embodies  only  a  part. 
Popular  opinions,  on  subjects  not  palpable  to  sense,  are  often 
true,  but  seldom  or  never  the  whole  truth.  They  are  a  part  of 
the  truth ;  sometimes  a  greater,  sometimes  a  smaller  part,  but 
exaggerated,  distorted,  and  disjoined  from  the  truths  by  which 
they  ought  to  be  accompanied  and  Hmited.  Heretical  opinions, 
on  the  other  hand,  are  generally  some  of  these  suppressed  and 
neglected  truths,  bursting  the  bonds  which  kept  them  down,  and 
either  seeking  reconciliation  with  the  truth  contained  in  the 
common  opinion,  or  fronting  it  as  enemies,  and  setting  them- 
selves up,  with  similar  exclusiveness,  as  the  whole  truth.  The 
latter  case  is  hitherto  the  more  frequent,  as,  in  the  human  mind, 
one-sidedness  has  always  been  the  rule,  and  many-sidedness  the 
exception.  Hence,  even  in  revolutions  of  opinion,  one  part  of 
the  truth  usually  sets  while  the  other  rises.  Even  progress, 
which  ought  to  superadd,  for  the  most  part  only  substitutes  one 
partial  and  incomplete  truth  for  another ;  improvement  con- 
sisting chiefly  in  this,  that  the  new  fragment  of  truth  is  more 
wanted,  more  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the  time,  than  that  which 
it  displaces.  Such  being  the  partial  character  of  prevailing 
opinions,  even  when  resting  on  a  true  foundation,  every  opinion 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION 


131 


which  embodies  somewhat  of  the  portion  of  truth  which  the 
common  opinion  omits,  ought  to  be  considered  precious,  with 
whatever  amount  of  error  and  confusion  that  truth  may  be 
blended.  No  sober  judge  of  human  affairs  will  feel  bound  to  be 
indignant  because  those  who  force  on  our  notice  truths  which  we 
should  otherwise  have  overlooked,  overlook  some  of  those  which 
we  see.  Rather,  he  will  tiiink  that  so  long  as  popular  truth  is 
one-sided,  it  is  more  desirable  than  otherwise  that  unpopular  truth 
should  have  one-sided  asserters  too  ;  such  being  usually  the  most 
energetic,  and  the  most  likely  to  compel  reluctant  attention  to  the 
fragment  of  wisdom  which  they  proclaim  as  if  it  were  the  whole. 
Thus,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  nearly  all  the  instructed, 
and  all  those  of  the  uninstructed  who  were  led  by  them,  were  lost 
in  admiration  of  what  is  called  civilization,  and  of  the  marvels  of 
modern  science,  literature,  and  philosophy,  and  while  greatly 
overrating  the  amount  of  unlikeness  between  the  men  of  modern 
and  those  of  ancient  times,  indulged  the  belief  that  the  whole  of 
the  difference  was  in  their  own  favor ;  with  what  a  salutary 
shock  did  the  paradoxes  of  Rousseau  explode  like  bombshells  in 
the  midst,  dislocating  the  compact  mass  of  one-sided  opinion,  and 
forcing  its  elements  to  recombine  in  a  better  form  and  with  addi- 
tional ingredients.  Not  that  the  current  opinions  were  on  the 
whole  farther  from  the  truth  than  Rousseau's  were ;  on  the  con- 
trary, they  were  nearer  to  it ;  they  contained  more  of  positive 
truth,  and  very  much  less  of  error.  Nevertheless,  there  lay  in 
Rousseau's  doctrine,  and  has  floated  down  the  stream  of  opinion 
along  with  it,  a  considerable  amount  of  exactly  those  truths 
which  the  popular  opinion  wanted ;  and  these  are  the  deposit 
which  was  left  behind  when  the  flood  subsided.  The  superior 
worth  of  simplicity  of  life,  the  enervating  and  demoralizing  effect 
of  the  trammels  and  hypocrisies  of  artificial  society,  are  ideas 
which  have  never  been  entirely  absent  from  cultivated  minds 
since  Rousseau  wrote ;  and  they  will  in  time  produce  their  due 
effect,  though  at  present  needing  to  be  asserted  as  much  as  ever, 
and  to  be  asserted  by  deeds,  for  words,  on  this  subject,  have 
nearly  exhausted  their  power. 


132  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

In  politics,  again,  it  is  almost  a  commonplace,  that  a  party  of 
order  or  stability,  and  a  party  of  progress  or  reform,  are  both  nec- 
essary elements  of  a  healthy  state  of  political  Ufe ;  until  the  one  or 
the  other  shall  have  so  enlarged  its  mental  grasp  as  to  be  a  party 
equally  of  order  and  of  progress,  knowing  and  distinguishing 
what  is  fit  to  be  preserved  from  what  ought  to  be  swept  away. 
Each  of  these  modes  of  thinking  derives  its  utility  from  the  defi- 
ciencies of  the  other ;  but  it  is  in  a  great  measure  the  opposition  of 
the  other  that  keeps  each  within  the  limits  of  reason  and  sanity. 
Unless  opinions  favorable  to  democracy  and  to  aristocracy,  to 
property  and  to  equab'ty,  to  cooperation  and  to  competition,  to 
luxury  and  to  abstinence,  to  sociality  and  individuality,  to  Uberty 
and  discipline,  and  all  the  other  standing  antagonisms  of  practi- 
cal hfe,  are  expressed  with  equal  freedom,  and  enforced  and  de- 
fended with  equal  talent  and  energy,  there  is  no  chance  of  both 
elements  obtaining  their  due ;  one  scale  is  sure  to  go  up,  and  the 
other  down.     Truth,  in  the  great  practical  concerns  of  Hfe,  is  so 
much  a  question  of  the  reconciUng  and  combining  of  opposites, 
that  very  few  have  minds  sufficiently  capacious  and  impartial  to 
make  the  adjustment  with  an  approach  to  correctness,  and  it 
has  to  be  made  by  the  rough  process  of  a  struggle  between  com- 
batants fighting  under  hostile  banners.     On  any  of   the  great 
open  questions  just  enumerated,  if  either  of  the  two  opinions  has 
a  better  claim  than  the  other,  not  merely  to  be  tolerated,  but  to 
be  encouraged  and  countenanced,  it  is  the  one  which  happens  at 
the  particular  time  and  place  to  be  in  a  minority.     That  is  the 
opinion  which,  for  the  time  being,  represents  the  neglected  in- 
terests, the  side  of  human  well-being  which  is  in  danger  of  obtain- 
ing less  than  its  share.     I  am  aware  that  there  is  not,  in  this 
country,  any  intolerance  of  differences  of  opinion  on  most  of  these 
topics.     They  are  adduced  to  show,  by  admitted  and  multipUed 
examples,  the  universality  of  the  fact,  that  only  through  diver- 
sity of  opinion  is  there,  in  the  existing  state  of  human  intellect, 
a  chance  of  fair  play  to  all  sides  of  the  truth.     When  there  are 
persons  to  be  found  who  form  an  exception  to  the  apparent 
unanimity  of  the  world  on  any  subject,  even  if  the  world  is  in  the 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        133 

right,  it  is  always  probable  that  dissentients  have  something 
worth  hearing  to  say  for  themselves,  and  that  truth  woiild  lose 
something  by  their  silence. 

It  maybe  objected,  "But  some  received  principles,  especially 
on  the  highest  and  most  vital  subjects,  are  more  than  half-truths. 
The  Christian  morality,  for  instance,  is  the  whole  truth  on  that 
subject,  and  if  any  one  teaches  a  morality  which  varies  from  it, 
he  is  wholly  in  error."  As  this  is  of  all  cases  the  most  important 
in  practice,  none  can  be  fitter  to  test  the  general  maxim.  But  be- 
fore pronouncing  what  Christian  morality  is  or  is  not,  it  would  be 
desirable  to  decide  what  is  meant  by  Christian  morality.  If  it 
means  the  morality  of  the  New  Testament,  I  wonder  that  any 
one  who  derives  his  knowledge  of  this  from  the  book  itself,  can 
suppose  that  it  was  announced  or  intended,  as  a  complete 
doctrine  of  morals.  The  Gospel  always  refers  to  a  preexisting 
morality,  and  confines  its  precepts  to  the  particulars  in  which 
that  morality  was  to  be  corrected,  or  superseded  by  a  wider  and 
higher ;  expressing  itself,  moreover,  in  terms  most  general,  often 
impossible  to  be  interpreted  literally,  and  possessing  rather  the 
impressiveness  of  poetry  or  eloquence  than  the  precision  of 
legislation.  To  extract  from  it  a  body  of  ethical  doctrine  has 
never  been  possible  without  eking  it  out  from  the  Old  Testament, 
that  is,  from  a  system  elaborate  indeed,  but  in  many  respects 
barbarous,  and  intended  only  for  a  barbarous  people.  St. 
Paul,  a  declared  enemy  to  this  Judaical  mode  of  interpret- 
ing the  doctrine  and  filling  up  the  scheme  of  his  Master, 
equally  assumes  a  preexisting  moraHty,  namely,  that  of  the 
Greeks  and  Romans ;  and  his  advice  to  Christians  is  in  a 
great  measure  a  system  of  accommodation  to  that ;  even  to  the 
extent  of  giving  an  apparent  sanction  to  slavery.  What  is  called 
Christian,  but  should  rather  be  termed  theological,  morality,  was 
not  the  work  of  Christ  or  the  Apostles,  but  is  of  much  later  origin, 
having  been  gradually  built  up  by  the  Catholic  Church  of  the 
first  five  centuries,  and  though  not  implicitly  adopted  by  moderns 
and  Protestants,  has  been  much  less  modified  by  them  than  might 
have  been  expected.     For  the  most  part,  indeed,  they  have  con- 


134  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

tented  themselves  with  cutting  off  the  additions  which  had  been 
made  to  it  in  the  Middle  Ages,  each  sect  supplying  the  place  by 
fresh  additions,  adapted  to  its  own  character  and  tendencies. 
That  mankind  owe  a  great  debt  to  this  moraUty,  and  to  its  early 
teachers,  I  should  be  the  last  person  to  deny ;  but  I  do  not  scruple 
to  say  of  it,  that  it  is,  in  many  important  points,  incomplete  and 
one-sided,  and  that  unless  ideas  and  feeUngs,  not  sanctioned  by  it, 
had  contributed  to  the  formation  of  European  life  and  character, 
human  affairs  would  have  been  in  a  worse  condition  than  they 
now  are.  Christian  morahty  (so  called)  has  all  the  characters  of 
a  reaction ;  it  is,  in  great  part,  a  protest  against  Paganism.  Its 
ideal  is  negative  rather  than  positive ;  passive  rather  than  active ; 
Innocence  rather  than  Nobleness ;  Abstinence  from  Evil,  rather 
than  energetic  Pursuit  of  Good  :  in  its  precepts  (as  has  been  well 
said)  "  thou  shalt  not "  predominates  unduly  over  "  thou  shalt." 
In  its  horror  of  sensuality,  it  made  an  idol  of  asceticism,  which 
has  been  gradually  compromised  away  into  one  of  legality.  It 
holds  out  the  hope  of  heaven  and  the  threat  of  hell,  as  the  ap- 
pointed and  appropriate  motives  to  a  virtuous  life :  in  this  faUing 
far  below  the  best  of  the  ancients,  and  doing  what  Ues  in  it  to 
give  to  human  morality  an  essentially  selfish  character,  by  dis- 
connecting each  man's  feelings  of  duty  from  the  interests  of  his 
fellow-creatures,  except  so  far  as  a  self-interested  inducement  is 
offered  to  him  for  consulting  them.  It  is  essentially  a  doctrine 
of  passive  obedience ;  it  inculcates  submission  to  all  authorities 
found  established ;  who  indeed  are  not  to  be  actively  obeyed 
when  they  command  what  religion  forbids,  but  who  are  not  to  be 
resisted,  far  less  rebelled  against,  for  any  amount  of  wrong  to 
ourselves.  And  while,  in  the  morahty  of  the  best  Pagan  nations, 
duty  to  the  state  holds  even  a  disproportionate  place,  infringing 
on  the  just  liberty  of  the  individual ;  in  purely  Christian  ethics, 
that  grand  department  of  duty  is  scarcely  noticed  or  acknowl- 
edged. It  is  in  the  Koran,  not  the  New  Testament,  that  we 
read  the  maxim  — "  A  ruler  who  appoints  any  man  to  an  office, 
when  there  is  in  his  dominions  another  man  better  qualified  for 
it-  sins  against  God  and  against  the  State."    What  little  recogni- 


LIBERTY   OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        135 

tion  the  idea  of  obligation  to  the  public  obtains  in  modern  moral- 
ity, is  derived  from  Greek  and  Roman  sources,  not  from  Chris- 
tian ;  as,  even  in  the  morality  of  private  life,  whatever  exists  of 
magnanimity,  highmindedness,  personal  dignity,  even  the  sense 
of  honor,  is  derived  from  the  purely  human,  not  the  religious 
part  of  our  education,  and  never  could  have  grown  out  of  a 
standard  of  ethics  in  which  the  only  worth,  professedly  recognized, 
'S  that  of  obedience. 

I  am  as  far  as  any  one  from  pretending  that  these  defects  are 
necessarily  inherent  in  the  Christian  ethics,  in  every  manner  in 
which  it  can  be  conceived,  or  that  the  many  requisites  of  a 
complete  moral  doctrine  which  it  does  not  contain,  do  not  admit 
of  being  reconciled  with  it.     Far  less  would  I  insinuate  this  of  the 
doctrines  and  precepts  of  Christ  himself.     I  beheve  that  the 
sayings  of  Christ  are  all  that  I  can  see  any  evidence  of  their 
having  been  intended  to  be ;   that  they  are  irreconcilable  with 
nothing  which  a  comprehensive  morality  requires ;   that  every- 
. thing  which  is  excellent  in  ethics  may  be  brought  within  them, 
with  no  greater  'violence  to  their  language  than  has  been  done  to 
it  by  all  who  have  attempted  to  deduce  from  them  any  practical 
system  of  conduct  whatever.     But  it  is  quite  consistent  with 
this  to  believe  that  they  contain,  and  were  meant  to  contain, 
only  a  part  of  the  truth ;   that  many  essential  elements  of  the 
highest  morality  are  among  the  things  which  are  not  provided 
for,  nor  intended  to  be  provided  for,  in  the  recorded  deliverances 
of  the  Founder  of  Christianity,  and  which  have  been  entirely 
thrown  aside  in  the  system  of  ethics  erected  on  the  basis  of  those 
deliverances  by  the  Christian  Church.     And  this  being  so,  I  think 
it  a  great  error  to  persist  in  attempting  to  find  in  the  Christian 
doctrine  that  complete  rule  for  our  guidance,  which  its  author 
intended  it  to  sanction  and  enforce,  but  only  partially  to  provide. 
I  believe,  too,  that  this  narrow  theory  is  becoming  a  grave  prac- 
tical evil,  detracting  greatly  from  the  value  of  the  moral  training 
and  instruction,  which  so  many  well-meaning  persons  are  now 
at  length  exerting  themselves  to  promote.     I  much  fear  that  by 
attempting  to  form  the  mind  and  feelings  on  an  exclusively  re- 


136  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

ligious  type,  and  discarding  those  secular  standards  (as  for 
want  of  a  better  name  they  may  be  called)  which  heretofore 
coexisted  with  and  supplemented  the  Christian  ethics,  receiving 
some  of  its  spirit,  and  infusing  into  it  some  of  theirs,  there  will 
result,  and  is  even  now  resulting,  a  low,  abject,  servile  type  of 
character,  which,  submit  itself  as  it  may  to  what  it  deems  the 
Supreme  Will,  is  incapable  of  rising  to  or  sympathizing  in  the 
conception  of  Supreme  Goodness.  I  believe  that  other  ethics 
than  any  which  can  be  evolved  from  exclusively  Christian 
sources,  must  exist  side  by  side  with  Christian  ethics  to  produce 
the  moral  regeneration  of  mankind ;  and  that  the  Christian  sys- 
tem is  no  exception  to  the  rule,  that  in  an  imperfect  state  of  the 
human  mind,  the  interests  of  truth  require  a  diversity  of  opinions. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  in  ceasing  to  ignore  the  moral  truths  not 
contained  in  Christianity,  men  should  ignore  any  of  those  which 
it  does  contain.  Such  prejudice,  or  oversight,  when  it  occurs,  is 
altogether  an  evil ;  but  it  is  one  from  which  we  cannot  hope  to 
be  always  exempt,  and  must  be  regarded  as  the  price  paid  for. 
an  inestimable  good.  The  exclusive  pretension  made  by  a  part 
of  the  truth  to  be  the  whole,  must  and  ought  to  be  protested 
against,  and  if  a  reactionary  impulse  should  make  the  protestors 
unjust  in  their  turn,  this  one-sidedness,  like  the  other,  may  be 
lamented,  but  must  be  tolerated.  If  Christians  would  teach  in- 
fidels to  be  just  to  Christianity,  they  should  themselves  be  just 
to  infidelity.  It  can  do  truth  no  ser\dce  to  blink  the  fact,  known 
to  all  who  have  the  most  ordinary  acquaintance  with  literary 
history,  that  a  large  portion  of  the  noblest  and  most  valuable 
moral  teaching  has  been  the  work,  not  only  of  men  who  did  not 
know,  but  of  men  who  knew  and  rejected,  the  Christian  faith. 

I  do  not  pretend  that  the  most  unlimited  use  of  the  freedom  of 
enunciating  all  possible  opinions  would  put  an  end  to  the  evils  of 
religious  or  philosophical  sectarianism.  Every  truth  which  men 
of  narrow  capacity  are  in  earnest  about,  is  sure  to  be  asserted, 
inculcated,  and  in  many  ways  even  acted  on,  as  if  no  other  truth 
existed  in  the  world,  or  at  all  events  none  that  could  limit  or 
qualify  the  first.     I  acknowledge  that  the  tendency  of  all  opin- 


LIBERTY  OF   THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        137 

ions  to  become  sectarian  is  not  cured  by  the  freest  discussion, 
but  is  often  heightened  and  exacerbated  thereby;  the  truth 
which  ought  to  have  been,  but  was  not,  seen,  being  rejected  all 
the  more  violently  because  proclaimed  by  persons  regarded  as 
opponents.  But  it  is  not  on  the  impassioned  partisan,  it  is  on 
the  calmer  and  more  disinterested  bystander,  that  this  collision 
of  opinion  works  its  salutary  effect.  Not  the  violent  conflict  be- 
tween parts  of  the  truth,  but  the  quiet  suppression  of  half  of  it, 
is  the  formidable  evil :  there  is  always  hope  when  people  are 
forced  to  listen  to  both  sides ;  it  is  when  they  attend  only  to  one 
that  errors  harden  into  prejudices,  and  truth  itself  ceases  to  have 
the  effect  of  truth,  by  being  exaggerated  into  falsehood.  And 
since  there  are  few  mental  attributes  more  rare  than  that  ju- 
dicial faculty  which  can  sit  in  intelligent  judgment  between 
two  sides  of  a  question,  of  which  only  one  is  represented  by  an 
advocate  before  it,  truth  has  no  chance  but  in  proportion  as 
every  side  of  it,  every  opinion  which  embodies  any  fraction  of 
the  truth,  not  only  finds  advocates,  but  is  so  advocated  as  to  be 
listened  to. 

We  have  now  recognized  the  necessity  to  the  mental  well-being 
of  mankind  (on  which  all  their  other  well-being  depends)  of  free- 
dom of  opinion,  and  freedom  of  the  expression  of  opinion,  on 
four  distinct  grounds ;  which  we  will  now  briefly  recapitulate. 

First,  if  any  opinion  is  compelled  to  silence,  that  opinion  may, 
for  aught  we  can  certainly  know,  be  true.  To  deny  this  is  to  as- 
sume our  own  infallibility. 

Secondly,  though  the  silenced  opinion  be  an  error,  it  may, 
and  very  commonly  does,  contain  a  portion  of  truth ;  and  since 
the  general  or  prevailing  opinion  on  any  subject  is  rarely  or 
never  the  whole  truth,  it  is  only  by  the  collision  of  adverse  opin- 
ions that  the  remainder  of  the  truth  has  any  chance  of  being 
supplied. 

Thirdly,  even  if  the  received  opinion  be  not  only  true,  but  the 
whole  truth ;  unless  it  is  suffered  to  be,  and  actually  is,  vigorously 
and  earnestly  contested,  it  will,  by  most  of  those  who  receive  it, 


138  JOHN   STUART   MILL 

be  held  in  the  manner  of  a  prejudice,  with  little  comprehension 
cr  feeling  of  its  rational  grounds.  And  not  only  this,  but, 
fourthly,  the  meaning  of  the  doctrine  itself  will  be  in  danger  of 
being  lost  or  enfeebled,  and  deprived  of  its  vital  effect  on  the 
character  and  conduct :  the  dogma  becoming  a  mere  formal 
profession,  inefficacious  for  good,  but  cumbering  the  ground,  and 
preventing  the  growth  of  any  real  and  heartfelt  conviction, 
from  reason  or  personal  experience. 

Before  quitting  the  subject  of  freedom  of  opinion,  it  is  fit  to 
take  some  notice  of  those  who  say  that  the  free  expression  of 
all  opinions  should  be  permitted,  on  condition  that  the  manner 
be  temperate,  and  do  not  pass  the  bounds  of  fair  discussion. 
Much  might  be  said  on  the  impossibility  of  fixing  where  these 
supposed  bounds  are  to  be  placed ;  for  if  the  test  be  offense  to 
those  whose  opinion  is  attacked,  I  think  experience  testifies  that 
this  offense  is  given  whenever  the  attack  is  telling  and  powerful, 
and  that  every  opponent  who  pushes  them  hard,  and  whom  they 
find  it  difficult  to  answer,  appears  to  them,  if  he  shows  any  strong 
feeling  on  the  subject,  an  intemperate  opponent.  But  this, 
though  an  important  consideration  in  a  practical  point  of  view, 
merges  in  a  more  fundamental  objection.  Undoubtedly  the 
manner  of  asserting  an  opinion,  even  though  it  be  a  true  one, 
may  be  very  objectionable,  and  may  justly  incur  severe  censure. 
But  the  principal  offenses  of  the  kind  are  such  as  it  is  mostly  im- 
possible, unless  by  accidental  self -betrayal,  to  bring  home  to 
conviction.  The  gravest  of  them  is,  to  argue  sophistically,  to 
suppress  facts  or  arguments,  to  misstate  the  elements  of  the 
case,  or  misrepresent  the  opposite  opinion.  But  all  this,  even  to 
the  most  aggravated  degree,  is  so  continually  done  in  perfect 
good  faith,  by  persons  who  are  not  considered,  and  in  many  other 
respects  may  not  deserve  to  be  considered,  ignorant  or  incompe- 
tent, that  it  is  rarely  possible  on  adequate  grounds  conscien- 
tiously to  stamp  the  misrepresentation  as  morally  culpable; 
and  still  less  could  law  presume  to  interfere  with  this  kind  of 
controversial  misconduct.  With  regard  to  what  is  commonly 
meant  by  intemperate  discussion,  namely,  invective,  sarcasm, 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  AND   DISCUSSION        139 

personality,  and  the  like,  the  denunciation  of  these  weapons 
would  deserve  more  sympathy  if  it  were  ever  proposed  to  inter- 
dict them  equally  to  both  sides ;  but  it  is  only  desired  to  restrain 
the  employment  of  them  against  the  prevaiHng  opinion  :  against 
the  unprevailing  they  may  not  only  be  used  without  general  dis- 
approval, but  will  be  likely  to  obtain  for  him  who  uses  them  the 
praise  of  honest  zeal  and  righteous  indignation.  Yet  whatever 
mischief  arises  from  their  use,  is  greatest  when  they  are  employed 
against  the  comparatively  defenseless ;  and  whatever  unfair 
advantage  can  be  derived  by  any  opinion  from  this  mode  of 
asserting  it,  accrues  almost  exclusively  to  received  opinions. 
The  worst  offense  of  this  kind  which  can  be  committed  by  a 
polemic,  is  to  stigmatize  those  who  hold  the  contrary  opinion  as 
bad  and  immoral  men.  To  calumny  of  this  sort,  those  who 
hold  any  unpopular  opinion  are  pecuHarly  exposed,  because 
they  are  in  general  few  and  uninfiuential,  and  nobody  but  them- 
selves feels  much  interest  in  seeing  justice  done  them ;  but  this 
weapon  is,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  denied  to  those  who  attack 
a  prevailing  opinion :  they  can  neither  use  it  with  safety  to 
themselves,  nor,  if  they  could,  would  it  do  anything  but  recoil  on 
their  own  cause.  In  general,  opinions  contrary  to  those  com- 
monly received  can  only  obtain  a  hearing  by  studied  moderation 
of  language,  and  the  most  cautious  avoidance  of  unnecessary 
offense,  from  which  they  hardly  ever  deviate  even  in  a  slight 
degree  without  losing  ground :  while  unmeasured  vituperation 
employed  on  the  side  of  the  prevailing  opinion,  really  does  deter 
people  from  professing  contrary  opinions,  and  from  listening  to 
those  who  profess  them.  For  the  interest,  therefore,  of  truth 
and  justice,  it  is  far  more  important  to  restrain  this  employment 
of  vituperative  language  than  the  other ;  and,  for  example,  if  it 
were  necessary  to  choose,  there  would  be  much  more  need  to 
discourage  offensive  attacks  on  infidelity  than  on  religion.  It  is, 
however,  obvious  that  law  and  authority  have  no  business  with 
restraining  either,  while  opinion  ought,  in  every  instance,  to 
determine  its  verdict  by  the  circumstances  of  the  individual  case ; 
condemning  every  one,  on  whichever  side  of  the  argument  he 


I40  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

places  himself,  in  whose  mode  of  advocacy  either  want  of  can- 
dor, or  malignity,  bigotry,  or  intolerance  of  feeling  manifest 
themselves ;  but  not  inferring  these  vices  from  the  side  which  a 
person  takes,  though  it  be  the  contrary  side  of  the  question  to  our 
own :  and  giving  merited  honor  to  every  one,  whatever  opin- 
ion he  may  hold,  who  has  calmness  to  see  and  honesty  to  sta,te 
what  his  opponents  and  their  opinions  really  are,  exaggerating 
nothing  to  their  discredit,  keeping  nothing  back  which  tells,  or 
can  be  supposed  to  tell,  in  their  favor.  This  is  the  real  moral- 
ity of  public  discussion ;  and  if  often  violated,  I  am  happy  to 
think  that  there  are  many  controversialists  who  to  a  great  extent 
observe  it,  and  a  still  greater  number  who  conscientiously  strive 
towards  it. 


< 


VI 
OF  THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY   OF   ERROR 

John  Morley 

[Viscount  Morley  (1838-)  was  in  the  early  years  of  his  public  life  editor 
of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  resigning  to  enter  Parliament  in  1883.  As  a  poli- 
tician he  was  a  strong  supporter  of  Gladstone's  policies,  and  a  member  of 
his  "Home  Rule  Cabinet."  In  the  domain  of  literary  study,  which  has 
been  for  him  a  serious  occupation  throughout  his  long  parliamentary  career, 
he  has  shown  a  penetrating  acquaintance  with  the  political  and  intellectual 
movements  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  studies  of  Burke,  Rousseau,  Voltaire, 
and  Diderot.  His  interest  in  the  history  of  English  political  reforms  is  seen 
in  his  Ufa  of  Cobden  and  in  his  monumental  biography  of  Gladstone. 

Of  the  Possible  Utility  of  Error  constitutes  the  second  chapter  of  the  author's 
work  On  Compromise,  published  in  1874,  a  cogent  and  timely  discussion,  in 
a  period  of  great  spiritual  and  political  uncertainty,  of  one  of  the  dominant 
principles  of  social  organization.  This  chapter  is  an  assertion  of  the  moral 
weakness,  and  even  the  futility  in  practice,  of  the  plea  of  expediency  which 
holds  it  possible  to  maintain  a  code  of  moral  principles  varied  to  suit  different 
grades  of  intelligence  and  education.  The  original  importance  of  this  chapter 
may  have  lessened  since  the  period  when  the  growth  of  scientific  skepticism 
seemed  to  churchmen  to  threaten  the  moral  restraints  inherent  in  religious 
faith;  but  even  with  our  modern  recognition  of  the  positive  influence  of 
scientific  truth  upon  moral  point  of  view,  the  essay  serves  as  a  useful 
criticism  of  an  attitude  of  mind  that  has  by  no  means  disappeared.] 

Das  Wahre  fordert;   aus  dem  Irrthum  entwickelt  sich  nichis,  er 
verwickelt  uns  nur}  —  Goethe. 

At  the  outset  of  an  inquiry  how  far  existing  facts  ought  to  be 
allowed  to  overrule  ideas  and  principles  that  are  at  variance  with 
them,  a  preliminary  question  lies  in  our  way,  about  which  it  may 
be  well  to  say  something.     This  is  the  question  of  a  dual  doc- 

1  The  truth  helps  us ;  nothing  comes  of  error  :  it  simply  entangles  us. 
—  Editors. 

141 


142  JOHN  MORLEY 

trine.  In  plainer  words,  the  question  whether  it  is  expedient 
that  the  more  enUghtened  classes  in  a  community  should  upon 
system  not  only  possess  their  light  in  silence,  but  whether  they 
should  openly  encourage  a  doctrine  for  the  less  enlightened  classes 
which  they  do  not  believe  to  be  true  for  themselves,  while  they 
regard  it  as  indispensably  useful  in  the  case  of  less  fortunate 
people.  An  eminent  teacher  tells  us  how  after  he  had  once 
succeeded  in  presenting  the  principle  of  Necessity  to  his  own  mind 
in  a  shape  which  seemed  to  bring  with  it  all  the  advantages  of 
the  principle  of  Free  Will,  "  he  no  longer  suffered  under  the  bur- 
den so  heavy  to  one  who  aims  at  being  a  reformer  in  opinions,  of 
thinking  one  doctrine  true,  and  the  contrary  doctrine  morally 
beneficial."  ^  The  discrepancy  which  this  writer  thought  a  heavy 
burden  has  struck  others  as  the  basis  of  a  satisfactory  solution. 

Nil  dulcius  est  bene  quam  munita  tenere 
Edita  doctrina  sapientum  templa  serena, 
Despicere  unde  queas  alios  passimque  videre 
Errare  atque  viam  palantes  quaerere  vitae.^ 

The  learned  are  to  hold  the  true  doctrine;  the  unlearned  are 
to  be  taught  its  morally  beneficial  contrary.  "  Let  the  Church," 
it  has  been  said,  "  admit  two  descriptions  of  believers,  those  who 
are  for  the  letter,  and  those  who  hold  by  the  spirit.  At  a  cer- 
tain point  in  rational  culture,  belief  in  the  supernatural  becomes 
for  many  an  impossibility ;  do  not  force  such  persons  to  wear  a 
cowl  of  lead.  Do  not  you  meddle  with  what  we  teach  or  write, 
and  then  we  will  not  dispute  the  common  people  with  you ;  do 
not  contest  our  place  in  the  school  and  the  academy,  and  then  we 
will  surrender  to  your  hands  the  country  school."  ^  This  is  only 
a  very  courageous  and  definite  way  of  saying  what  a  great  many 
less  accomplished  persons  than  M.  Renan  have  silently  in  their 

^  Mill's  Autobiography,  p.  170. 

*  Nothing  is  sweeter  than  to  dwell  in  the  temples  secured  and  established 
b3'  the  calm  teachings  of  the  wise,  whence  you  may  look  down  upon  others 
wana.ring  hither  and  thither  and  straggling  about  in  search  of  the  path  of 
life.  —  Editors. 

^  M.  Renan's  Reforme  Intellectnelle  et  Morale  de  la  France,  p.  98. 


OF   THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY   OF   ERROR  143 

hearts,  and  in  England  quite  as  extensively  as  in  France.  They 
do  not  believe  in  hell,  for  instance,  but  they  think  hell  a  useful 
fiction  for  the  lower  classes.  They  would  deeply  regret  any  change 
in  the  spirit  or  the  machinery  of  public  instruction  which  would 
release  the  lower  classes  from  so  wholesome  an  error.  And  as 
with  hell,  so  with  other  articles  of  the  supernatural  system ;  the 
existence  of  a  Being  who  will  distribute  rewards  and  penalties 
in  a  future  state,  the  permanent  sentience  of  each  human  person- 
ality, the  vigilant  supervision  of  our  conduct,  as  well  as  our  in- 
most thoughts  and  desires,  by  the  heavenly  powers;  and  so 
forth. 

Let  us  discuss  this  matter  impersonally,  without  reference  to 
our  own  opinions  and  without  reference  to  the  evidence  for 
or  against  their  truth.  I  am  not  speaking  now  of  those  who 
hold  all  these  ideas  to  be  certainly  true,  or  highly  probable,  and 
who  at  the  same  time  incidentally  insist  on  the  great  usefulness  of 
such  ideas  in  confirming  morality  and  producing  virtuous  types 
of  character.  With  such  persons,  of  course,  there  is  no  question 
of  a  dual  doctrine.  They  entertain  certain  convictions  themselves 
and  naturally  desire  to  have  their  influence  extended  over  others. 
The  proposition  which  we  have  to  consider  is  of  another  kind. 
It  expresses  the  notions  of  those  who  —  to  take  the  most  impor- 
tant kind  of  illustration  —  think  untrue  the  popular  ideas  of  su- 
pernatural interference  in  our  obscure  human  afifairs ;  who  think 
untrue  the  notion  of  the  prolongation  of  our  existence  after 
death  to  fulfill  the  purpose  of  the  supernatural  powers ;  or  at 
least  who  think  them  so  extremely  improbable  that  no  reasonable 
man  or  woman,  once  awakened  to  a  conviction  of  this  improba- 
bility, would  thenceforth  be  capable  of  receiving  effective  check 
or  guidance  from  beliefs,  that  would  have  sunk  slowly  down  to 
the  level  of  doubtful  guesses.  We  have  now  to  deal  with  those 
who,  while  taking  this  view  of  certain  doctrines,  still  declare  them 
to  be  indispensable  for  restraining  from  antisocial  conduct  all 
who  are  not  acute  or  instructed  enough  to  see  through  them. 
In  other  words,  they  think  error  useful,  and  that  it  may  be  the 
best  thing  for  society  that  masses  of  rnen  should  cheat  and  de- 


144  JOHN  MORLEY 

ceive  themselves  in  their  most  fervent  aspirations  and  their 
deepest  assurances.  This  is  the  furthest  extreme  to  which  the 
empire  of  existing  facts  over  principles  can  well  be  imagined  to 
go.  It  lies  at  the  root  of  every  discussion  upon  the  limits  which 
separate  lawful  compromise  or  accommodation  from  palpable 
hypocrisy. 

It  will  probably  be  said  that  according  to  the  theory  of  the 
school  of  which  M.  Renan  is  the  most  eloquent  representative, 
the  common  people  are  not  really  cheating  themselves  or  being 
cheated.  Indeed  M.  Renan  himself  has  expatiated  on  the  charm 
of  seeing  figures  of  the  ideal  in  the  cottages  of  the  poor,  images 
representing  no  reality,  and  so  forth.  "  What  a  delight,"  he 
cries,  "  for  the  man  who  is  borne  down  by  six  days  of  toil  to  come 
on  the  seventh  to  rest  upon  his  knees,  to  contemplate  the  tall 
columns,  a  vault,  arches,  an  altar ;  to  listen  to  the  chanting,  to 
hear  moral  and  consoling  words  ! "  ^  The  dogmas  which  criti- 
cism attacks  are  not  for  these  poor  people  "  the  object  of  an 
explicit  affirmation,"  and  therefore  there  is  no  harm  in  them ;  "it 
is  the  privilege  of  pure  sentiment  to  be  invulnerable,  and  to  play 
with  poison  without  being  hurt  by  it."  In  other  words,  the  dog- 
mas are  false,  but  the  liturgy,  as  a  performance  stirring  the  senses 
of  awe,  reverence,  susceptibility  to  beauty  of  various  kinds,  ap- 
peals to  and  satisfies  a  sentiment  that  is  both  true  and  indis- 
pensable in  the  human  mind.  More  than  this,  in  the  two  or 
three  supreme  moments  of  life  to  which  men  look  forward  and 
on  which  they  look  back,  —  at  birth,  at  the  passing  of  the  thresh- 
old into  fullness  of  life,  at  marriage,  at  death,  —  the  Church  is 
present  to  invest  the  hour  with  a  certain  solemn  and  dignified 
charm.  That  is  the  way  in  which  the  instructed  are  to  look  at 
the  services  of  a  Church,  after  they  have  themselves  ceased  to 
believe  its  faith,  as  a  true  account  of  various  matters  which  it 
professes  to  account  for  truly. 

It  will  be  perceived  that  this  is  not  exactly  the  ground  of  those 
who  think  a  number  of  what  they  confess  to  be  untruths,  whole- 
some for  the  common  people  for  reasons  of  police,  and  who  would 
^  Etudes  d'Histoire  Religieuse,  Preface,  p.  xvi. 


OF  THE  POSSIBLE  UTILITY  OF  ERROR  145 

maintain  churches  on  the  same  principle  on  which  they  maintain 
the  county  constabulary.  It  is  a  psychological,  not  a  political 
ground.  It  is  on  the  whole  a  more  true,  as  well  as  a  far  more 
exalted,  position.  The  human  soul,  they  say,  has  these  lovely 
and  elevating  aspirations ;  not  to  satisfy  them  is  to  leave  man  a 
dwarfed  creature.  Why  quarrel  with  a  system  that  leaves  you  to 
satisfy  them  in  the  true  way,  and  does  much  to  satisfy  them  in  a 
false  but  not  very  harmful  way  among  those  who  unfortunately 
have  to  sit  in  the  darkness  of  the  outer  court  ? 

This  is  not  a  proper  occasion  for  saying  anything  about  the 
adequateness  of  the  Catholic,  or  any  other  special  manner  of  fos- 
tering and  solacing  the  religious  impulses  of  men.  We  have  to 
assume  that  the  instructed  class  believe  the  Catholic  dogmas 
to  be  untrue,  and  yet  wish  the  uninstructed  to  be  handed  over 
to  a  system  that  reposes  on  the  theory  that  these  dogmas  are 
superlatively  true.  What  then  is  to  be  said  of  the  tenableness 
of  such  a  position  ?  To  the  plain  man  it  looks  like  a  deliberate 
connivance  at  a  plan  for  the  propagation  of  error  —  assuming, 
as  I  say,  for  the  moment,  that  these  articles  of  belief  are  errone- 
ous and  contrary  to  fact  and  evidence.  Ah,  but,  we  are  told, 
the  people  make  no  explicit  affirmation  of  dogma;  that  does 
nothing  for  them ;  they  are  indifferent  to  it.  A  great  variety  of 
things  might  be  said  to  this  statement.  We  might  ask,  for  in- 
stance, whether  the  people  ever  made  an  explicit  affirmation  of 
dogma  in  the  past,  or  whether  it  was  always  the  hazy  indifferent 
matter  which  it  is  supposed  to  be  now.  If  so,  whether  we  shall 
not  have  to  recast  our  most  fundamental  notions  of  the  way  in 
which  Christian  civilization  has  been  evolved.  If  not,  and  if  peo- 
ple did  once  explicitly  afl&rm  dogma,  when  exactly  was  it  that 
they  ceased  to  do  so  ? 

The  answers  to  these  questions  would  all  go  to  show  that  at 
the  time  when  religion  was  the  great  controlling  and  organizing 
force  in  conduct,  the  prime  elemental  dogmas  were  accepted  with 
the  most  vivid  conviction  of  reality.  I  do  not  pretend  that  the 
common  people  followed  all  the  inferences  which  the  intellectual 
subtlety  of  the  master  spirits  of  theology  drew  so  industriously 


146  JOHN  MORLEY 

from  the  simple  premises  of  scripture  and  tradition.  But  assut- 
edly  dogma  was  at  the  foundation  of  the  whole  structure.  When 
did  it  cease  to  be  so  ?  How  was  the  structure  supported,  after 
you  had  altered  this  condition  of  things  ? 

Apart  from  this  historic  issue,  the  main  question  one  would 
like  to  put  to  the  upholder  of  duality  of  religion  on  this  plea,  is 
the  simple  one,  whether  the  power  of  the  ceremonial  which  charms 
him  so  much  is  not  actually  at  this  moment  drawn  wholly  from 
dogma  and  the  tradition  of  dogma;  whether  its  truth  is  not 
explicitly  afhrmed  to  the  unlettered  man,  and  whether  the  insep- 
arable connection  between  the  dogma  and  the  ceremonial  is  not 
constantly  impressed  upon  him  by  the  spiritual  teachers  to  whom 
the  dual  system  hands  him  and  his  order  over  for  all  time  ?  If 
any  one  of  these  philosophic  critics  will  take  the  trouble  to  listen 
to  a  few  courses  of  sermons  at  the  present  day,  and  the  remark 
applies  not  less  to  Protestant  than  to  Catholic  churches,  he  will 
find  that  instead  of  that "  parole  morale  et  consolante  "  ^  which  is  so 
soothing  to  think  of,  the  pulpit  is  now  the  home  of  fervid  con- 
troversy and  often  exacerbated  declamation  in  favor  of  ancient 
dogma  against  modern  science.  We  do  not  say  whether  this  is 
or  is  not  the  wisest  line  for  the  clergy  to  follow.  We  only  press 
the  fact  against  those  who  wish  us  to  believe  that  dogma  counts 
for  nothing  in  the  popular  faith,  and  that  therefore  we  need  not 
be  uneasy  as  to  its  effects. 

Next,  one  would  say  to  those  who  think  that  all  will  go  well  if 
you  divide  the  community  into  two  classes,  one  privileged  to 
use  its  own  mind,  the  other  privileged  to  have  its  mind  used  by  a 
priesthood,  that  they  overlook  the  momentous  circumstance  of 
these  professional  upholders  of  dogmatic  systems  being  also  pos- 
sessed of  a  vast  social  influence  in  questions  that  naturally  belong 
to  another  sphere.  There  is  hardly  a  single  great  controversy  in 
modern  politics  where  the  statesman  does  not  find  himself  in 
immediate  contact  with  the  real  or  supposed  interests,  and  with 
the  active  or  passive  sentiment,  of  one  of  these  religious  systems. 
Therefore  if  the  instructed  or  intellectually  privileged  class  cheer- 
^  Moral  and  comforting  word.  —  Editors, 


OF   THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF   ERROR  147 

fully  leave  the  field  open  to  men  who,  ex  hypothesis  are  presumed 
to  be  less  instructed,  narrower,  more  impenetrable  by  reason,  and 
the  partisans  of  the  letter  against  the  spirit,  then  this  result  fol- 
lows.    They  are  deliberately  strengthening  the  hands  of  the  per- 
sons least  fitted  by  judgment,  experience,  and  temper  for  using 
such  power  rightly.     And  they   are   strengthening   them   not 
merely  in  dealing  with  religious  matters,  but,  what  is  of  more 
importance,  in  dealing  with  an  endless  variety  of  the  gravest 
social  and  political  matters.    It  is  impossible  to  map  out  the  exact 
dimensions  of  the  field  in  which  a  man  shall  exercise  his  influence, 
and  to  which  he  is  to  be  rigorously  confined.     Give  men  influence 
in  one  matter,  especially  if  that  be  such  a  matter  as  religious  be- 
lief and  ceremonial,  and  it  is  simply  impossible  that  this  influ- 
ence shall  not  extend  with  more  or  less  effect  over  as  much  of 
the  whole  sphere  of  conduct  as  they  may  choose  to  claim.     This 
is  no  discredit  to  them  ;  on  the  contrary  it  is  to  their  honor.     So, 
in  short,  in  surrendering  the  common  people  without  dispute  or 
effort  to  organized  priesthoods  for  religious  purposes,  you  would 
be  inevitably  including  a  vast  number  of  other  purposes  in  the 
selfsame   destination.     This   does  not   in   the  least   prejudice 
practical  ways  of  dealing  with  certain  existing  circumstances, 
such  as  the  propriety  or  justice  of  allowing  a  Catholic  people  to 
have  a  Catholic  university.    It  is  only  an  argument  against  erect- 
ing into  a  complete  and  definite  formula  the  division  of  a  society 
into  two  great  castes,  the  one  with  a  religion  of  the  spirit,  the 
other  with  a  creed  of  the  letter. 

Again,  supposing  that  the  enlightened  caste  were  to  consent  to 
abandon  the  common  people  to  what  are  assumed  to  be  lower  and 
narrower  forms  of  truth,  —  which  is  after  all  little  more  than  a 
fine  phrase  for  forms  of  falsehood,  —  what  can  be  more  futile 
than  to  suppose  that  such  a  compromise  will  be  listened  to  for  a 
single  moment  by  a  caste  whose  first  principle  is  that  they  are  the 
possessors  and  ministers,  not  of  an  inferior  or  superior  form  of 
truth,  but  of  the  very  truth  itself,  absolute,  final,  complete, 
divinely  sent,  infallibly  interpreted  ?  The  disciples  of  the  rela- 
^  From  our  assumption.  —  Editors. 


148  JOHN   MORLEY 

tive  may  afford  to  compromise.     The  disciples  of  the  absolute, 
never. 

We  shall  see  other  objections,  as  we  go  on,  to  this  state  of  things, 
in  which  a  minority  holds  true  opinions  and  abandons  the  ma- 
jority to  false  ones.  At  the  bottom  of  the  advocacy  of  a  dual 
doctrine  slumbers  the  idea  that  there  is  no  harm  in  men  being 
mistaken,  or  at  least  only  so  little  harm  as  is  more  than  com- 
pensated for  by  the  marked  tranquillity  in  which  their  mistake 
may  wrap  them.  This  is  not  an  idea  merely  that  intellectual 
error  is  a  pathological  necessity  of  the  mind,  no  more  to  be 
escaped  than  the  pathological  necessities  which  afiEiict  and  finally 
dissolve  the  body.  That  is  historically  true.  It  is  an  idea  that 
error  somehow  in  certain  stages,  where  there  is  enough  of  it, 
actually  does  good,  like  vaccination.  Well,  the  thesis  of  the 
present  chapter  is  that  erroneous  opinion  of  belief,  in  itself  and  as 
such,  can  never  be  useful.  This  may  seem  a  truism  which  every- 
body is  willing  to  accept  without  demur.  But  it  is  one  of  those 
truisms  which  persons  habitually  forget  and  repudiate  in  practice, 
just  because  they  have  never  made  it  real  to  themselves  by  consid- 
ering and  answering  the  objections  that  may  be  brought  against 
it.  We  see  this  repudiation  before  our  eyes  every  day.  Thus,  for 
instance,  parents  theoretically  take  it  for  granted  that  error  can- 
not be  useful,  while  they  are  teaching  or  allowing  others  to  teach 
their  children  what  they,  the  parents,  believe  to  be  untrue.  Thus 
husbands  who  think  the  common  theology  baseless  and  un- 
meaning, are  found  to  prefer  that  their  wives  shall  not  question 
this  theology  nor  neglect  its  rites.  These  are  only  two  out  of  a 
hundred  examples  of  the  daily  admission  that  error  may  be  very 
useful  to  other  people.  I  need  hardly  say  that  to  deny  this,  as 
the  commonplace  to  which  this  chapter  is  devoted  denies  it,  is  a 
different  thing  from  denying  the  expediency  of  letting  errors 
alone  at  a  given  time.  That  is  another  question,  to  be  discussed 
afterwards.  You  may  have  a  thoroughly  vicious  and  dangerous 
enemy,  and  yet  it  may  be  expedient  to  choose  your  own  hour  and 
occasion  for  attacking  him.  "  The  passage  from  error  to  truth," 
in  the  words  of  Condorcet,  ''may  be  accompanied  by  certain  evils. 


OF   THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF  ERROR  149 

Every  great  change  necessarily  brings  some  of  these  in  its  train  ; 
and  though  they  may  be  always  far  below  the  evil  you  are  for 
destroying,  yet  it  ought  to  do  what  is  possible  to  diminish  them. 
It  is  not  enough  to  do  good ;  one  must  do  it  in  a  good  way.  No 
doubt  we  should  destroy  all  errors,  but  as  it  is  impossible  to  de- 
stroy them  all  in  an  instant,  we  should  imitate  a  prudent  archi- 
tect who,  when  obliged  to  destroy  a  building,  and  knowing  how 
its  parts  are  united  together,  sets  about  its  demolition  in  such  a 
way  as  to  prevent  its  fall  from  being  dangerous." 

Those,  let  us  note  by  the  way,  who  are  accustomed  to  think  the 
moral  tone  of  the  eighteenth  century  low  and  gross  compared 
with  that  of  the  nineteenth,  may  usefully  contrast  these  just  and 
prudent  words  of  caution  in  extirpating  error,  with  M.  Kenan's 
invitation  to  men  whom  he  considers  wrong  in  their  interpreta- 
tion of  religion,  to  plant  their  error  as  widely  and  deeply  as  they 
can ;  and  who  are  moreover  themselves  supposed  to  be  de- 
moralized, or  else  they  would  not  be  likely  to  acquiesce  in  a 
previous  surrender  of  the  universities  to  men  whom  they  think 
in  mortal  error.  Apart,  however,  from  M.  Renan,  Condorcet's 
words  merely  assert  the  duty  of  setting  to  work  to  help  on  the 
change  from  false  to  true  opinions  with  prudence,  and  this  every 
sensible  man  admits.  Our  position  is  that  in  estimating  the 
situation,  in  counting  up  and  balancing  the  expediencies  of  an 
attack  upon  error  at  this  or  that  point,  nothing  is  to  be  set  to  the 
credit  of  error  as  such,  nor  is  there  anything  in  its  own  operations 
or  effects  to  entitle  it  to  a  moment's  respite.  Every  one  would 
admit  this  at  once  in  the  case  of  physical  truths,  though  there 
are  those  who  say  that  some  of  the  time  spent  in  the  investiga- 
tion of  physical  truths  might  be  more  advantageously  devoted  to 
social  problems.  But  in  the  case  of  moral  and  religious  truths 
or  errors,  people,  if  they  admit  that  nothing  is  to  be  set  to  the 
credit  of  error  as  such,  still  constantly  have  a  subtle  and  practi- 
cally mischievous  confusion  in  their  minds  between  the  possible 
usefulness  of  error,  and  the  possible  expediency  of  leaving  it  tem- 
porarily undisturbed.  What  happens  in  consequence  of  such  a 
confusion  is  this.     Men  leave  error  undisturbed,  because  they 


I50  JOHN  MORLEY 

accept  in  a  loose  way  the  proposition  that  a  behef  may  be  "mor- 
ally useful  without  being  intellectually  sustainable."  They  dis- 
guise their  own  dissent  from  popular  opinions,  because  they  re- 
gard such  opinions  as  useful  to  other  people.  We  are  not  now 
discussing  the  case  of  those  who  embrace  a  creed  for  themselves, 
on  the  ground  that,  though  they  cannot  demonstrate  its  truth  to 
the  understanding,  yet  they  find  it  pregnant  with  moralizing  and 
elevating  characteristics.  We  are  thinking  of  a  very  different 
attitude  —  that,  namely,  of  persons  who  beheve  a  creed  to  be  not 
more  morally  useful  than  it  is  intellectually  sustainable,  so  far  as 
they  themselves  are  concerned.  To  them  it  is  pure  and  un- 
compensated error.  Yet  from  a  vague  and  general  idea  that 
what  is  useless  error  to  them  may  be  useful  to  others,  they 
insist  on  doing  their  best  to  perpetuate  the  system  which 
spreads  and  consecrates  the  error.  And  how  do  they  settle  the 
question  ?  They  reckon  up  the  advantages,  and  forget  the 
drawbacks.  They  detect  and  dwell  on  one  or  two  elements 
of  utility  in  the  false  belief  or  the  worn-out  institution,  and 
leave  out  of  all  account  the  elements  that  make  in  the  other 
direction. 

Considering  how  much  influence  this  vague  persuasion  has 
in  encouraging  a  well-meaning  hypocrisy  in  individuals,  and  a 
profound  stagnation  in  societies,  it  may  be  well  to  examine  the 
matter  somewhat  generally.  Let  us  try  to  measure  the  force  of 
some  of  the  most  usual  pleas  for  error. 

I.  A  false  opinion,  it  may  be  said,  is  frequently  found  to  have 
clustering  around  it  a  multitude  of  excellent  associations,  which 
do  far  more  good  than  the  false  opinion  that  supports  them  does 
harm.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  for  instance,  there  was  a  belief  that  a 
holy  man  had  the  gift  of  routing  demons,  of  healing  the  sick,  and 
of  working  divers  other  miracles.  Supposing  that  this  belief  was 
untrue,  supposing  that  it  was  an  error  to  attribute  the  sudden 
death  of  an  incredible  multitude  of  troublesome  flies  in  a  church 
to  the  fact  of  Saint  Bernard  having  excommunicated  them,  what 
then  ?  The  mistaken  opinion  was  still  associated  with  a  deep 
reverence  for  virtue  and  sanctity,  and  this  was  more  valuable 


OF   THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF   ERROR  151 

than  the  error  of  the  explanation  of  the  death  of  the  flies  was 
noxious  or  degrading. 

The  answer  to  this  seems  to  be  as  follows.  First,  in  making 
false  notions  the  proofs  or  close  associates  of  true  ones,  you  are 
exposing  the  latter  to  the  ruin  which  awaits  the  former.  For  ex- 
ample, if  you  have  in  the  minds  of  children  or  servants  associated 
honesty,  industry,  truthfulness,  with  the  fear  of  hell-fire,  then 
supposing  this  fear  to  become  extinct  in  their  minds,  —  which, 
being  unfounded  in  truth,  it  is  in  constant  risk  of  doing,  —  the 
virtues  associated  with  it  are  likely  to  be  weakened  exactly  in 
proportion  as  that  association  was  strong. 

Second,  for  all  good  habits  in  thought  or  conduct  there  are  good 
and  real  reasons  in  the  nature  of  things.  To  leave  such  habits 
attached  to  false  opinions  is  to  lessen  the  weight  of  these  natural 
or  spontaneous  reasons,  and  so  to  do  more  harm  in  the  long  run 
than  effacement  of  them  seems  for  a  time  to  do  good.  Most 
excellencies  in  human  character  have  a  spontaneous  root  in  our 
nature.  Moreover  if  they  had  not,  and  where  they  have  not, 
there  is  always  a  valid  and  real  external  defense  for  them.  The 
unreal  defense  must  be  weaker  than  the  real  one,  and  the  substi- 
tution of  a  weak  for  a  strong  defense,  where  both  are  to  be  had,  is 
not  useful,  but  the  very  opposite. 

II.  It  is  true,  the  objector  would  probably  continue,  that  there 
is  a  rational  defense  for  all  excellencies  of  conduct,  as  there  is  for 
all  that  is  worthy  and  fitting  in  institutions.  But  the  force  of  a 
rational  defense  lies  in  the  rationality  of  the  man  to  whom  it 
is  proffered.  The  arguments  which  persuade  one  trained  in 
scientific  habits  of  thought,  only  touch  persons  of  the  same  kind. 
Character  is  not  all  pure  reason.  That  fitness  of  things  which 
you  pronounce  to  be  the  foundation  of  good  habits,  may  be  borne 
in  upon  men,  and  may  speak  to  them,  through  other  channels 
than  the  syllogism.  You  assume  a  community  of  highly  trained 
wranglers  and  proficient  sophisters.  The  plain  fact  is  that, 
for  the  mass  of  men,  use  and  wont,  rude  or  gracious  symbols, 
blind  custom,  prejudices,  superstitions,  —  however  erroneous  in 
themselves,  however  inadequate  to  the  conveyance  of  the  best 


152  JOHN  MORLEY 

truth,  —  are  the  only  safe  guardians  of  the  common  virtues.     In 
this  sense,  then,  error  may  have  its  usefulness. 

A  hundred  years  ago  this  apology  for  error  was  met  by  those 
high-minded  and  interesting  men,  the  French  behevers  in  human 
perfectibihty,  with  their  characteristic  dogma,  —  of  which  Rous- 
seau was  the  ardent  expounder,  —  that  man  is  born  with  a  clear 
and  unsophisticated  spirit,  perfectly  able  to  discern  all  the  simple 
truths  necessary  for  common  conduct  by  its  own  unaided  light. 
His  motives  are  all  pure  and  unselfish  and  his  intelligence  is  un- 
clouded, until  priests  and  tyrants  mutilate  the  one  and  corrupt 
the  other.  We  who  have  the  benefit  of  the  historic  method,  and 
have  to  take  into  account  the  medium  that  surrounds  a  human 
creature  the  moment  it  comes  into  the  world,  to  say  nothing  of  all 
the  inheritance  from  the  past  which  it  brings  within  it  into  the 
world  at  the  same  moment,  cannot  take  up  this  ground.  We 
cannot  maintain  that  everybody  is  born  with  light  enough  to  see 
the  rational  defenses  of  things  for  himself,  without  the  educa- 
tion of  institutions.  What  we  do  maintain  is  —  and  this  is  the 
answer  to  the  plea  for  error  at  present  under  consideration  —  that 
whatever  impairs  the  brightness  of  such  light  as  a  man  has,  is  not 
useful  but  hurtful.  Our  reply  to  those  who  contend  for  the  use- 
fulness of  error  on  the  ground  of  the  comparative  impotence  of 
rationality  over  ordinary  minds,  is  something  of  this  kind.  Super- 
stition, blind  obedience  to  custom,  and  the  other  substitutes  for 
a  right  and  independent  use  of  the  mind,  may  accidentally  and 
in  some  few  respects  impress  good  ideas  upon  persons  who  are  too 
darkened  to  accept  these  ideas  on  their  real  merits.  But  then 
superstition  itself  is  the  main  cause  of  this  very  darkness.  To 
hold  error  is  in  so  far  to  foster  erroneous  ways  of  thinking  on  all 
subjects ;  is  to  make  the  intelligence  less  and  less  ready  to  receive 
truth  in  all  matters  whatever.  Men  are  made  incapable  of  per- 
ceiving the  rational  defenses,  and  of  feeling  rational  motives,  for 
good  habits,  —  so  far  as  they  are  thus  incapable,  —  by  the  very 
errors  which  we  are  asked  silently  to  countenance  as  useful 
substitutes  for  right  reason.  "  Erroneous  motives,"  as  Condorcet 
has  expressed  this  matter,  "  have  an  additional  drawback  at- 


OF  THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF   ERROR  153 

tached  to  them,  the  habit  which  they  strengthen  of  reasoning  ill. 
The  more  important  the  subject  on  which  you  reason  ill,  and  the 
more  you  busy  yourself  about  it,  by  so  much  the  more  dangerous 
do  the  influences  of  such  a  habit  become.  It  is  especially  on 
subjects  analogous  to  that  on  which  you  reason  wrongly,  or  which 
you  connect  with  it  by  habit,  that  such  a  defect  extends  most 
powerfully  and  most  rapidly.  Hence  it  is  extremely  hard  for  the 
man  who  believes  himself  obliged  to  conform  in  his  conduct  to 
what  he  considers  truths  useful  to  men,  but  who  attributes  the 
obligation  to  erroneous  motives,  to  reason  very  correctly  on  the 
truths  themselves ;  the  more  attention  he  pays  to  such  motives, 
and  the  more  importance  he  comes  to  attach  to  them,  the  more 
likely  he  will  be  to  go  wrong."  ^  So,  in  short,  superstition  does  an 
immense  harm  by  enfeebling  rational  ways  of  thinking ;  it  does  a 
little  good  by  accidentally  indorsing  rational  conclusions  in  one  or 
two  matters.  And  yet,  though  the  evil  which  it  is  said  to  repair 
is  a  trifle  beside  the  evil  which  it  is  admitted  to  inflict,  the  balance 
of  expediencies  is  after  all  declared  to  be  such  as  to  warrant  us  in 
calling  errors  useful ! 

III.  A  third  objection  now  presents  itself  to  me,  which  I  wish  to 
state  as  strongly  as  possible .  ' '  Even  if  a  false  opinion  cannot  in  it- 
self be  more  useful  than  a  true  one,  whatever  good  habits  may 
seem  to  be  connected  with  it,  yet,"  it  may  be  contended,  "  rela- 
tively to  the  general  mental  attitude  of  a  set  of  men,  to  their 
other  notions  and  maxims,  the  false  opinion  may  entail  less  harm 
than  would  be  wrought  by  its  mere  demolition.  There  are  false 
opinions  so  intimately  bound  up  with  the  whole  way  of 
thinking  and  feeling,  that  to  introduce  one  or  two  detached  true 
opinions  in  their  stead,  would,  even  if  it  were  possible,  only  serve 
to  break  up  that  coherency  of  character  and  conduct  which  it  is 
one  of  the  chief  objects  of  moralists  and  the  great  art  of  living  to 
produce.  For  a  true  opinion  does  not  necessarily  bring  in  its  train 
all  the  other  true  opinions  that  are  logically  connected  with  it, 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  only  too  notorious  a  fact  in  the  history  of 
belief,  that  not  merely  individuals  but  whole  societies  are  capable 

^  (Euvres,  vol.  v,  p.  354. 


154  JOHN  MORLEY 

of  holding  at  one  and  the  same  time  contradictory  opinions  and 
mutually  destructive  principles.  On  the  other  hand,  neither 
does  a  false  opinion  involve  practically  all  the  evil  consequences 
deducible  from  it.  For  the  results  of  human  inconsistency  are 
not  all  unhappy,  and  if  we  do  not  always  act  up  to  virtuous  prin- 
ciple, no  more  do  we  always  work  out  to  its  remotest  inference 
every  vicious  principle.  Not  insincerity,  but  inconsistency,  has 
constantly  turned  the  adherents  of  persecuting  precepts  into 
friends  of  tolerant  practice." 

"  It  is  a  comparatively  small  thing  to  persuade  a  superstitious 
person  to  abandon  this  or  that  article  of  his  superstition.  You 
have  no  security  that  the  rejection  of  the  one  article  which  you 
have  displaced  will  lead  to  the  rejection  of  any  other,  and  it  is 
quite  possible  that  it  may  lead  to  all  the  more  fervid  an  adhesion 
to  what  remains  behind.  Error,  therefore,  in  view  of  such  con- 
siderations may  surely  be  allowed  to  have  at  least  a  provisional 
utility." 

Now  undoubtedly  the  repudiation  of  error  is  not  at  all  the  same 
thing  as  embracing  truth.  People  are  often  able  to  see  the  force 
of  arguments  that  destroy  a  given  opinion,  without  being  able 
to  see  the  force  of  arguments  for  the  positive  opinion  that  ought 
to  replace  it.  They  can  only  be  quite  sure  of  seeing  both,  when 
they  have  acquired  not  merely  a  conviction  that  one  notion  is 
false  and  another  true,  but  have  furthermore  exchanged  a  gener- 
ally erroneous  way  of  thinking  for  a  generally  correct  way.  Hence 
the  truly  important  object  with  every  one  who  holds  opinions 
which  he  deems  it  of  the  highest  moment  that  others  should  ac- 
cept, must  obviously  be  to  reach  people's  general  ways  of  think- 
ing ;  to  stir  their  love  of  truth  ;  to  penetrate  them  with  a  sense 
of  the  difference  in  the  quality  of  evidence ;  to  make  them  will- 
ing to  listen  to  criticism  and  new  opinion ;  and  perhaps  above  all 
to  teach  them  to  take  ungrudging  and  daily  trouble  to  clear  up  in 
their  minds  the  exact  sense  of  the  terms  they  use. 

If  this  be  so,  a  false  opinion,  like  an  erroneous  motive,  can 
hardly  have  even  a  provisional  usefulness.  For  how  can  you 
attack  an  erroneous  way  of  thinking  except  in  detail,  that  is  to  say, 


OF   THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF  ERROR  155 

through  the  sides  of  this  or  that  single  wrong  opinion  ?  Each  of 
these  wrong  opinions  is  an  illustration  and  type,  as  it  is  a  standing 
support  and  abettor,  of  some  kind  of  wrong  reasoning,  though 
they  are  not  all  on  the  same  scale  nor  all  of  them  equally  instruc- 
tive. It  is  precisely  by  this  method  of  gradual  displacement  of 
error  step  by  step,  that  the  few  stages  of  progress  which  the  race 
has  yet  traversed,  have  been  actually  achieved.  Even  if  the 
place  of  the  erroneous  idea  is  not  immediately  taken  by  the  cor- 
responding true  one,  or  by  the  idea  which  is  at  least  one  or  two 
degrees  nearer  to  the  true  one,  still  the  removal  of  error  in  this 
purely  negative  way  amounts  to  a  positive  gain.  Why  ?  For 
the  excellent  reason  that  it  is  the  removal  of  a  bad  element  which 
otherwise  tends  to  propagate  itself,  or  even  if  it  fails  to  do  that, 
tends  at  the  best  to  make  the  surrounding  mass  of  error  more  in- 
veterate. All  error  is  what  physiologists  term  fissiparous,  and 
in  exterminating  one  false  opinion  you  may  be  hindering  the 
growth  of  an  uncounted  brood  of  false  opinions. 

Then  as  to  the  maintenance  of  that  coherency,  interdepend- 
ence, and  systematization  of  opinions  and  motives,  which  is 
said  to  make  character  organic,  and  is  therefore  so  highly  prized 
by  some  schools  of  thought.  No  doubt  the  loosening  of  this  or 
that  part  of  the  fabric  of  heterogeneous  origin,  which  constitutes 
the  character  of  a  man  or  woman,  tends  to  loosen  the  whole.  B  ut  do 
not  let  us  feed  ourselves  upon  phrases.  This  organic  coherency, 
what  does  it  come  to  ?  It  signifies  in  a  general  way,  to  describe  it 
briefly,  a  harmony  between  the  intellectual,  the  moral,  and  the 
practical  parts  of  human  nature ;  an  undisturbed  cooperation 
between  reason,  affection,  and  will ;  the  reason  prescribing  noth- 
ing against  which  the  affections  revolt,  and  proscribing  nothing 
which  they  crave ;  and  the  will  obeying  the  joint  impulses  of  these 
two  directing  forces,  without  liability  to  capricious  or  extrava- 
gant disturbance  of  their  direction.  Well,  if  the  reason  were 
perfect  in  information  and  method,  and  the  affections  faultless  in 
their  impulse,  then  organic  unity  of  character  would  be  the  final 
consummation  of  all  human  improvement,  and  it  would  be  crimi- 
nal, even  if  it  were  possible,  to  undermine  a  structure  of  such 


156  JOHN   MORLEY 

priceless  value.  But  short  of  this  there  can  be  no  value  in  co- 
herency and  harmonious  consistency  as  such.  So  long  as  error 
is  an  element  in  it,  then  for  so  long  the  whole  product  is  vitiated. 
Undeniably  and  most  fortunately,  social  virtues  are  found  side 
by  side  with  speculative  mistakes  and  the  gravest  intellectual 
imperfections.  We  may  apply  to  humanity  the  idea  which,  as 
Hebrew  students  tell  us,  is  imputed  in  the  Talmud  to  the  Su- 
preme Being.  God  prays,  the  Talmud  says,  and  his  prayer  is 
this:  "  Be  it  my  will  that  my  mercy  overpower  my  justice."  And 
so  with  men,  with  or  without  their  will,  their  mercifulness 
overpowers  their  logic.  And  not  their  mercifulness  only,  but 
all  their  good  impulses  overpower  their  logic.  To  repeat  the 
words  which  I  have  put  into  the  objector's  mouth,  we  do  not 
always  work  out  every  vicious  principle  to  its  remotest  infer- 
ence. What,  however,  is  this  but  to  say  that  in  such  cases 
character  is  saved,  not  by  its  coherency,  but  by  the  opposite ;  to 
say  not  that  error  is  useful,  but  what  is  a  very  different  thing, 
that  its  mischievousness  is  sometimes  capable  of  being  averted  or 
minimized  ? 

The  apologist  may  retort  that  he  did  not  mean  logical  coher- 
ency, but  a  kind  of  practical  everyday  coherency,  which  may  be 
open  to  a  thousand  abstract  objections,  yet  which  still  secures 
both  to  the  individual  and  to  society  a  number  of  advantages  that 
might  be  endangered  by  any  disturbance  of  opinion  or  motive. 
No  doubt,  and  the  method  and  season  of  chasing  erroneous 
opinions  and  motives  out  of  the  mind  must  always  be  a  matter 
of  much  careful  and  farseeing  consideration.  Only,  in  the  course 
of  such  consideration,  let  us  not  admit  the  notion  in  any  form 
that  error  can  have  even  provisional  utility.  For  it  is  not  the 
error  which  confers  the  advantages  that  we  desire  to  preserve, 
but  some  true  opinion  or  just  motive  or  high  or  honest  sentiment, 
which  exists  and  thrives  and  operates  in  spite  of  the  error  and  in 
face  of  it,  springing  from  man's  spontaneous  and  unformulated 
recognition  of  the  real  relations  of  things.  This  recognition  is 
very  faint  in  the  beginnings  of  society.  It  grows  clearer  and 
firmer  with  each  step  forward.     And  in  a  tolerably  civilized  age 


OF  THE  POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF  ERROR  157 

it  has  become  a  force  on  which  you  can  fairly  lean  with  a  con- 
siderable degree  of  assurance. 

And  this  leads  to  the  central  point  of  the  answer  to  the  argu- 
ment from  coherency  of  conduct.  In  measuring  utility  you  have 
to  take  into  account  not  merely  the  service  rendered  to  the  objects 
of  the  present  hour,  but  the  contribution  to  growth,  progress 
and  the  future.  From  this  point  of  view  most  of  the  talk  about 
unity  of  character  is  not  much  more  than  a  glorifying  of  stagna- 
tion. It  leaves  out  of  sight  the  conditions  necessary  for  the  con- 
tinuance of  the  unending  task  of  human  improvement.  Now 
whatever  ease  may  be  given  to  an  individual  or  a  generation  by 
social  or  religious  error,  such  error  at  any  rate  can  conduce 
nothing  to  further  advancement.  That,  at  least,  is  not  one  of 
its  possible  utilities. 

This  is  also  one  of  the  answers  to  the  following  plea.  "Though 
the  knowledge  of  every  positive  truth  is  an  useful  acquisition, 
this  doctrine  cannot  without  reservation  be  applied  to  negative 
truth.  When  the  only  truth  ascertainable  is  that  nothing  can 
be  known,  we  do  not,  by  this  knowledge,  gain  any  new  fact  by 
which  to  guide  ourselves."  ^  But  the  negative  truth  that  nothing 
can  be  known  is  in  fact  a  truth  that  guides  us.  It  leads  us  away 
from  sterile  and  irreclaimable  tracts  of  thought  and  emotion  and 
so  inevitably  compels  the  energies  which  would  otherwise  have 
been  wasted,  to  feel  after  a  more  profitable  direction.  By  leav- 
ing the  old  guide-marks  undisturbed,  you  may  give  ease  to  an 
existing  generation,  but  the  present  ease  is  purchased  at  the  cost 
of  future  growth.  To  have  been  deprived  of  the  faith  of  the  old 
dispensation  is  the  first  condition  of  strenuous  endeavor  after  the 
new. 

No  doubt  history  abounds  with  cases  in  which  a  false  opinion, 
on  moral  or  religious  subjects,  or  an  erroneous  motive  in  conduct, 
has  seemed  to  be  a  stepping-stone  to  truth.  But  this  is  in  no 
sense  a  demonstration  of  the  utility  of  error.  For  in  all  such 
cases  the  erroneous  opinion  or  motive  was  far  from  being  wholly 

1  Mill's  Three  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  73.  I  have  offered  some  criticisms 
on  the  whole  passage  in  Critical  Miscellanies,  Second  Series,  pp.  300-304. 


158  JOHN  MORLEY 

erroneous,  or  wholly  without  elements  of  truth  and  reality.  If  it 
helped  to  quicken  the  speed  or  mend  the  direction  of  progress, 
that  must  have  been  by  virtue  of  some  such  elements  within  it. 
All  that  was  error  in  it  was  pure  waste,  or  worse  than  waste.  It 
is  true  that  the  religious  sentiment  has  clothed  itself  in  a  great 
number  of  unworthy,  inadequate,  depressing,  and  otherwise  mis- 
leading shapes,  dogmatic  and  liturgic.  Yet  on  the  whole  the 
religious  sentiment  has  conferred  enormous  benefits  on  civiliza- 
tion. This  is  no  proof  of  the  utility  of  the  mistaken  direction 
which  these  dogmatic  or  liturgic  shapes  imposed  upon  it.  On 
the  contrary,  the  effect  of  the  false  dogmas  and  enervating  litur- 
gies is  so  much  that  has  to  be  deducted  from  the  advantages 
conferred  by  a  sentiment  in  itself  valuable  and  of  priceless  capa- 
bility. 

Yes,  it  will  be  urged,  but  from  the  historic  conditions  of  the 
time,  truth  could  only  be  conveyed  in  erroneous  forms,  and  mo- 
tives of  permanent  price  for  humanity  could  only  be  secured  in 
these  mistaken  expressions.  Here  I  would  again  press  the  point 
of  this  necessity  for  erroneous  forms  and  mistaken  expressions 
being,  in  a  great  many  of  the  most  important  instances,  itself 
derivative,  one  among  other  ill  consequences  of  previous  moral 
and  religious  error.  "It  was  gravely  said,"  Bacon  tells  us,  "by 
some  of  the  prelates  in  the  Council  of  Trent,  where  the  doctrines 
of  the  Schoolmen  have  great  sway,  that  the  Schoolmen  were  like 
Astronomers,  which  did  faigne  Eccentricks  and  Epicycles  and 
Engines  of  Orbs  to  save  the  Phenomena ;  though  they  knew  there 
were  no  such  Things ;  and  in  like  manner  that  the  Schoolmen 
had  framed  a  number  of  subtile  and  intricate  Axioms  and 
Theorems,  to  save  the  practice  of  the  Church."  This  is  true  of 
much  else  besides  scholastic  axioms  and  theorems.  Subordi- 
nate error  was  made  necessary  and  invented,  by  reason  of  some 
preexistent  main  stock  of  error,  and  to  save  the  practice  of  the 
Church.  Thus  we  are  often  referred  to  the  consolation  which 
this  or  that  doctrine  has  brought  to  the  human  spirit.  But 
what  if  the  same  system  had  produced  the  terror  which  made 
absence  of  consolation  intolerable  ?     How  much  of  the  neces- 


OF  THE   POSSIBLE   UTILITY   OF  ERROR  159 

sity  for  expressing  the  enlarged  humanity  of  the  Church  in  the 
doctrine  of  purgatory  arose  from  the  existence  of  the  older 
unsoftened  doctrine  of  eternal  hell  ? 

Again,  how  much  of  this  alleged  necessity  of  error,  as  alloy 
for  the  too  pure  metal  of  sterling  truth,  is  to  be  explained  by  the 
interest  which  powerful  castes  or  corporations  have  had  in  pre- 
serving the  erroneous  forms,  even  when  they  could  not  resist,  or 
did  not  wish  to  resist,  their  impregnation  by  newer  and  better 
doctrine  ?  This  interest  was  not  deliberately  sinister  or  malig- 
nant. It  may  be  more  correctly  as  well  as  more  charitably  ex- 
plained by  that  infirmity  of  human  nature  which  makes  us  very 
ready  to  believe  what  it  is  on  other  grounds  convenient  to  us  to 
believe.  Nobody  attributes  to  pure  malevolence  the  heartiness 
with  which  the  great  corporation  of  lawyers,  for  example,  resist 
the  removal  of  superfluous  and  obstructive  forms  in  their  prac- 
tice ;  they  have  come  to  look  on  such  forms  as  indispensable 
safeguards.  Hence  powerful  teachers  and  preachers  of  all  kinds 
have  been  spontaneously  inclined  to  suppose  a  necessity,  which 
had  no  real  existence,  of  preserving  as  much  as  was  possible  of 
what  we  know  to  be  error,  even  while  introducing  wholesome 
modification  of  it.  This  is  the  honest,  though  mischievous,  con- 
servatism of  the  human  mind.  We  have  no  right  to  condemn  our 
foregoers  ;  far  less  to  lavish  on  them  the  evil  names  of  impostor, 
charlatan,  and  brigand,  which  the  zealous  unhistoric  school  of 
the  last  century  used  so  profusely.  But  we  have  a  right  to  say 
of  them,  as  we  say  of  those  who  imitate  their  policy  now,  that 
their  conservatism  is  no  additional  proof  of  the  utility  of  error. 
Least  of  all  is  it  any  justification  for  those  who  wish  to  have 
impressed  upon  the  people  a  complete  system  of  religious  opin- 
ion which  men  of  culture  have  avowedly  put  away.  And,  more- 
over, the  very  priests  must,  I  should  think,  be  supposed  to  have 
put  it  away  also.  Else  they  would  hardly  be  invited  deliberately 
to  abdicate  their  teaching  functions  in  the  very  seats  where  teach- 
ing is  of  the  weightiest  and  most  far-spreading  influence. 

Meanwhile  our  point  is  that  the  reforms  in  opinion  which  have 
been  effected  on  the  plan  of  pouring  the  new  wine  of  truth  into 


i6o  JOHN   MORLEY 

the  old  bottles  of  superstition  —  though  not  dishonorable  to  the 
sincerity  of  the  reformers  — are  no  testimony  to  even  the  tem- 
porary usefulness  of  error.  Those  who  think  otherwise  do  not 
look  far  enough  in  front  of  the  event.  They  forget  the  evil 
wrought  by  the  prolonged  duration  of  the  error,  to  which  the 
added  particle  of  truth  may  have  given  new  vitality.  They  over- 
look the  ultimate  enervation  that  is  so  often  the  price  paid 
for  the  temporary  exaltation. 

Nor,  finally,  can  they  know  the  truths  which  the  error  thus 
prolonged  has  hindered  from  coming  to  the  birth.  A  strenuous 
disputant  has  recently  asserted  against  me  that  "the  region  of 
the  migJit  have  been  lies  beyond  the  Hmits  of  sane  speculation."  ^ 
It  is  surely  extending  optimism  too  far  to  insist  on  carrying  it 
back  right  through  the  ages.  To  me  at  any  rate  the  history  of 
mankind  is  a  huge  pis-aller,-  just  as  our  present  society  is ;  a  pro- 
digious wasteful  experiment,  from  which  a  certain  number  of 
precious  results  have  been  extracted,  but  which  is  not  now,  nor 
ever  has  been  at  any  other  time,  a  final  measure  of  all  the  possi- 
biHties  of  the  time.  This  is  not  inconsistent  with  the  scientific 
conception  of  history;  it  is  not  to  deny  the  great  law  that 
society  has  a  certain  order  of  progress ;  but  only  to  urge  that 
\\athin  that,  the  only  possible  order,  there  is  always  room  for  all 
kinds  and  degrees  of  invention,  improvement,  and  happy  or 
unhappy  accident.  There  is  no  discoverable  law  fixing  precisely 
the  more  or  the  less  of  these ;  nor  how  much  of  each  of  them  a 
community  shall  meet  with,  nor  exactly  when  it  shall  meet 
with  them.  We  have  to  distinguish  between  possibility  and 
necessity.  Only  certain  steps  in  advance  are  possible  at  a 
given  time ;  but  it  is  not  inevitable  that  these  potential  advances 
should  all  be  realized.  Does  anybody  suppose  that  humanity 
has  had  the  profit  of  all  the  inventive  and  improving  capacity 
born  into  the  world  ?  That  Turgot,  for  example,  was  the  only 
man  that  ever  lived  who  might  have  done  more  for  society  than 
he  was  allowed  to  do,  and  spared  society  a  cataclysm  ?     No,  — 

'  Sir  J.  F.  Stephen's  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity,  2d  ed.,  p.  19,  note. 
■'  A  condition  which  must  be  accepted  for  want  of  a  better.  —  Editors. 


OF   THE  POSSIBLE   UTILITY  OF  ERROR  i6i 

history  is  a  pis-aller.  It  has  assuredly  not  moved  without  the 
relation  of  cause  and  effect ;  it  is  a  record  of  social  growth  and 
its  conditions ;  but  it  is  also  a  record  of  interruption  and  misad- 
ventiu^e  and  perturbation.  You  trace  the  long  chain  which  has 
made  us  what  we  are  in  this  aspect  and  that.  But  where  are  the 
dropped  hnks  that  might  have  made  all  the  difference  ?  Uhi 
sunt  eorum  tabulce  qui  post  vota  nun-cupata  perierunt?  ^  \\Tiere  is 
the  fruit  of  those  multitudinous  gifts  which  came  into  the  world 
in  imtimely  seasons  ?  We  accept  the  past  for  the  same  reason 
that  we  accept  the  laws  of  the  solar  system,  though,  as  Comte 
says,  "  we  can  easily  conceive  them  improved  in  certain  respects." 
The  past,  like  the  solar  system,  is  beyond  reach  of  modification 
at  our  hands,  and  we  cannot  help  it.  But  it  is  surely  the  mere 
midsummer  madness  of  philosophic  complacency  to  think  that 
we  have  come  by  the  shortest  and  easiest  of  all  imaginable 
routes  to  our  present  point  in  the  march ;  to  suppose  that  we 
have  wasted  nothing^  lost  nothing,  cruelly  destroyed  nothing, 
on  the  road.  WTiat  we  have  lost  is  all  in  the  region  of  the 
"might  have  been,"  and  we  are  justified  in  taking  this  into 
account,  and  thinking  much  of  it,  and  in  trying  to  find  causes  for 
the  loss.  One  of  them  has  been  want  of  liberty  for  the  human 
intelHgence ;  and  another,  to  return  to  our  proper  subject,  has 
been  the  prolonged  existence  of  superstition,  of  false  opinions, 
and  of  attachment  to  gross  sjTiibols,  beyond  the  time  when  they 
might  have  been  successfully  attacked,  and  would  have  fallen 
into  decay  but  for  the  mistaken  pohtical  notion  of  their  utility. 
In  making  a  just  estimate  of  this  utility,  if  we  see  reason  to  be- 
Ueve  that  these  false  opinions,  narrow  superstitions,  gross  sym- 
bols, have  been  an  impediment  to  the  free  exercise  of  the  In- 
tel Ugence  and  a  worthier  culture  of  the  emotions,  then  we  are 
justified  in  placing  the  imknown  loss  as  a  real  and  most  weighty 
item  in  the  account  against  them. 

In  short,  then,  the  utmost  that  can  be  said  on  behalf  of  errors 
in  opinion  and  motive  is  that  they  are  ine\-itable  elements  in 

'  Where  are  the  votive  tablets  of  those  who  have  perished  after  proclaim- 
ffig  their  vows  ?  —  Editors. 


1 62  JOHN  MORLEY 

human  growth.  But  the  inevitable  does  not  coincide  with  the 
useful.  Pain  can  be  avoided  by  none  of  the  sons  of  men,  yet  the 
horrible  and  uncompensated  subtraction  which  it  makes  from 
the  value  and  usefulness  of  human  life,  is  one  of  the  most  for- 
midable obstacles  to  the  smoother  progress  of  the  world.  And 
as  with  pain,  so  with  error.  The  moral  of  our  contention  has 
reference  to  the  temper  in  which  practically  we  ought  to  regard 
false  doctrine  and  ill-directed  motive.  It  goes  to  show  that  if 
we  have  satisfied  ourselves  on  good  grounds  that  the  doctrine  is 
false,  or  the  motive  ill  directed,  then  the  only  question  that  we 
need  ask  ourselves  turns  solely  upon  the  possibility  of  breaking 
it  up  and  dispersing  it,  by  methods  compatible  with  the  doctrine 
of  liberty.  Any  embarrassment  in  dealing  with  it,  due  to  a 
semi-latent  notion  that  it  may  be  useful  to  some  one  else,  is  a 
weakness  that  hinders  social  progress. 


VII 

THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES   OF   OPTIMISM 
William  Hurrel  Mallock 

[William  Hurrel  Mallock  (1849-)  is  a  well-known  English  writer  of 
fiction  and  of  poetry,  and  an  essayist  on  philosophical,  economic,  and  so- 
ciological topics.  Probably  his  greatest  distinction  as  a  writer  lies  in  this 
last  field,  in  which  he  stands  as  an  upholder  of  conservatism  in  dealing  with 
the  social  problems  of  to-day. 

The  Scientific  Bases  of  Optimism  was  published  originally  in  the  Fort- 
nightly Review  for  1889,  and  was  reprinted  in  1895  in  the  author's  Studies  of 
Contemporary  Superstition.  The  title  possibly  fails  to  convey  the  actual  im- 
port of  the  essay,  as  the  writer's  view  as  expressed  here  is  that  there  are 
probably  no  scientific  bases  for  optimism.  Mr.  Mallock  means  by  this  that 
the  evidence  of  history  fails  to  assure  us  that  the  progress  of  the  human  race 
is  one  of  continuous  betterment,  and  that  an  optimism  which  seeks  in  science 
justification  for  a  belief  in  consistent  human  progress  is  mistaken  and  unwar- 
ranted. Religion,  he  states,  has  been  at  least  an  appreciable  encouragement  to 
human  conduct  and  effort  which  have  as  their  aims  the  enrichment  of  life ;  but 
science  has  as  yet  produced  no  equivalent  for  the  moral  force  of  a  religious 
faith.  The  increased  knowledge  of  life  which  we  have  derived  from  science 
is,  he  thinks,  as  an  ethical  stimulus  almost  negligible.  In  this  attitude  the 
author  represents  the  philosophical  judgment  of  not  merely  many  of  our 
contemporary  essayists,  but  of  a  number  of  novelists  and  dramatists  who 
have  made  their  writings  the  vehicles  for  a  concrete  philosophy.  As  a  more 
or  less  popular  analysis  of  optimism  as  a  philosophical  attitude  —  and  this 
is  to  be  distinguished  from  optimism  as  a  commendable  habit  of  mind  — 
this  essay  is  probably  as  effective  as  recent  years  have  given  us.] 

In  many  ways  public  attention  in  England  has  lately  been  called 
afresh  to  the  great  and  universal  question  of  what  our  modern 
science,  if  fatal  to  miraculous  Christianity,  will  itself  put,  or  allow 
to  be  put,  in  place  of  it.  Only  a  few  months  since,  in  the  pages 
of  this  Review,  a  new  manifesto  was  issued  by  one  of  our  best 
known  Positivists,  which  purported  to  describe  the  exact  reli- 

16.^ 


1 64  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

gious  position  taken  up  by  the  infant  Church  of  Humanity. 
Mr.  John  Morley  has  republished  in  ten  volumes  what  is,  under 
one  of  its  aspects,  neither  more  nor  less  than  an  an ti- Christian 
creed,  imbedded  in  a  series  of  criticisms.  Other  eminent  writers 
equally  anti- Christian  have  been  again  exhibiting  their  opinions 
to  the  gaze  of  the  pitiable  millions,  who  still  sit  hugging  the 
broken  fetters  of  theology.  Indeed,  we  may  say  that  during  the 
past  two  years,  each  of  the  principal  sects  into  which  the  Protes- 
tantism of  science  has  split  itself  has  appealed  to  us  afresh, 
through  the  mouth  of  some  qualified  minister ;  whilst  the  hold 
which  such  questions  have  on  the  public  mind,  whenever  they 
are  put  in  a  way  which  the  public  can  comprehend,  has  been 
curiously  illustrated  by  the  eagerness  of  even  frivolous  people, 
in  devouring  a  recent  novel,  which  on  ordinary  grounds  would  be 
unreadable,  and  whose  sole  interest  consisted  in  its  treatment  of 
Christianity. 

Stimulated  by  the  example  of  our  scientific  instructors,  I 
propose  to  follow,  as  faithfully  as  I  am  able,  in  their  footsteps. 
There  are  certain  canons  of  criticism  and  there  is  a  certain  skep- 
tical temper,  which  they  have  applied  to  Christianity,  and  which 
they  say  has  destroyed  it.  The  same  canons  and  temper  I  now 
propose  to  apply  to  the  principal  doctrine  which  they  offer  to  the 
world  as  a  substitute. 

Of  course  it  will  be  said  that  thinkers  who  call  themselves 
scientific  offer  us  doctrines  of  widely  different  kinds.  No  doubt 
this  is  true.  Amongst  men  of  science  as  doctrinaires,  there  are  as 
many  sects  as  there  are  amongst  theological  Protestants ;  nor  was 
it  without  meaning,  as  I  shall  show  by  and  by,  that  I  spoke  of 
their  creeds  collectively,  under  the  name  of  Scientific  Protes- 
tantism. But  though,  like  theological  Protestants,  they  differ 
amongst  themselves,  and  even  quarrel  amongst  themselves, 
like  theological  Protestants  also,  they  have  fundamental  points 
of  agreement ;  and  it  is  solely  with  these  last  that  I  now  propose 
to  concern  myself.  Let  us  take  first  a  hasty  glance  at  their  dif- 
ferences ;  and  it  will  be  presently  plain  enough  what  the  points 
of  agreement  are. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES   OF   OPTIMISM  165 

Putting  aside,  then,  all  minor  questions,  Scientific  Protes- 
tantism may  be  said,  with  substantial  accuracy,  to  be  composed 
at  the  present  moment  of  five  principal  sects,  which  differ  from 
one  another  mainly  in  the  following  ways.  One  of  them,  whilst 
denying,  as  they  all  do,  both  miracles  and  a  future  life,  believes 
in  a  personal  God,  not  unlike  the  Father  of  the  Gospels.  Indeed, 
it  adopts  most  of  what  the  Gospels  say  of  Him.  It  accepts  their 
statements ;  it  only  denies  their  authority.  There  is  a  second 
sect  which  retains  a  God  also,  but  a  God,  as  it  fancies,  of  a  much 
sublimer  kind.  He  is  far  above  any  relationship  so  definite  as 
that  of  a  father;  indeed,  we  gather  that  he  would  think  even 
personality  vulgar.  If  we  ask  what  he  is,  we  receive  a  double 
answer.  He  is  a  metaphysical  necessity ;  he  is  also  an  object  of 
sentiment ;  and  he  is  apprehended  alternately  in  a  vague  sigh 
and  a  syllogism.  He  is,  in  fact,  a  God  of  the  very  kind  that 
Faust  described  so  finely  when  engaged  in  seducing  Margaret. 
Neither  of  these  two  sects  is  greatly  admired  by  a  third,  which 
regards  the  God  of  the  first  as  a  mutilated  relic  of  Christianity, 
and  the  God  of  the  second  as  an  idle,  maundering  fancy.  It  has, 
however,  an  object  of  adoration  of  its  own,  which  it  declares,  like 
St.  Paul,  as  the  reality  ignorantly  worshiped  by  the  others.  Its 
declaration,  however,  unlike  St.  Paul's,  is  necessarily  of  extreme 
brevity,  for  this  Unknown  God  is  nothing  else  than  the  Unknow- 
able. It  is  the  philosopher's  substance  of  the  universe  underly- 
ing phenomena ;  and  it  raises  our  lives  somehow  by  making  us 
feel  our  ignorance  of  it.  These  three  sects  we  may  call  Unita- 
rians, Deists,  and  Pantheists.  There  is  a  fourth  which  consid- 
ers them  all  three  ridiculous ;  but  the  third,  with  its  Unknow- 
able, the  most  ridiculous  of  all.  This  fourth  sect  has  also  its 
God,  which  is  best  described  by  saying  that  it  differs  from  the 
Unknowable  in  being  known  in  one  particular  way.  It  is  re- 
vealed in  a  general  tendency,  discoverable  in  human  affairs, 
which,  taking  one  thousand  years  with  another,  is  alleged  on  the 
whole  to  make  for  righteousness  or  for  progress.  The  individ- 
ual man  is  not  made  in  God's  image ;  but  the  fortunes  or  the 
misfortunes  of  a  sufficient  number  of  men  are  something  still 


i66  WILLIAM   HURREL   MALLOCK 

better  —  they  are  the  manifestations  of  God  himself.  Lastly, 
we  have  a  fifth  sect,  nearest  akin  to  the  fourth,  but  differing 
from  it  and  from  all  the  others  in  one  important  particular.  It 
rids  itself  of  any  idea  of  God  altogether,  as  a  complete  superfluity. 
An  object  of  adoration,  like  all  the  others,  it  has  ;  and,  like  the 
fourth,  it  finds  this  object  in  the  tendencies  of  human  history. 
But  why,  it  asks,  should  we  call  them  the  manifestations  of  God  ? 
Why  wander  off  to  anything  so  completely  beside  the  point  ? 
They  are  not  the  manifestations  of  God.  It  is  obvious  what 
they  are ;  they  are  the  manifestations  of  Humanity.  We  have 
here,  under  our  noses,  in  a  visible  and  tangible  form,  the  true  ob- 
ject of  all  these  sublime  emotions,  those  hours  of  comforting  con- 
templation, which  men  have  been  offering  in  vain  to  the  acceptance 
of  all  the  infinities  in  rotation.  The  object  which  we  have 
scoured  the  universe  and  ransacked  our  fancies  to  find,  has  all 
the  while  been  actually  in  contact  with  ourselves,  and  we  our- 
selves have  been  actually  integral  parts  of  it. 

Here,then,  classified  with  sufficient  accuracy,  are  the  principal 
forms  of  religion,  which  those  who  reject  Christianity  are  now 
offering  the  world,  in  the  name  of  science,  as  substitutes.  Now 
the  great  fact  w^hich  I  wish  to  point  out  is  this :  however  much 
the  four  first  differ  from  one  another  and  from  the  last,  yet  the 
main  tenets  of  the  last  form  an  integral  part  of  all.  The  wor- 
shipers of  Humanity  base  their  worship  of  it  on  certain  beliefs 
as  to  evolution  and  progress,  which  give  to  human  events  some 
collective  and  coherent  meaning.  Every  one  of  the  other  sects, 
let  it  worship  what  it  will,  bases  its  worship  on  precisely  the 
same  foundation.  The  Scientific  Theists,  denying  both  a  future 
Ufe  and  a  revelation,  and  yet  maintaining  that  God  has  moral 
relations  with  man,  and  that  a  man's  personal  pleasure  is  the 
least  thing  a  man  lives  for,  can  explain  such  a  doctrine  only  by 
affirming  a  social  progress  which  enlarges  the  purposes  of  the  in- 
dividual and  exhibits  the  purpose  of  God.  The  religion  of  the 
Unknowable  is  obviously  but  the  religion  of  Humanity,  with  the 
Unknowable  placed  under  it,  like  the  body  of  a  violoncello,  in  the 
hope  of  producing  a  deeper  moral  vibration ;  and  of  every  form 


THE   SCIENTIFIC  BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  167 

of  scientific  theism  we  may  say  the  same  with  equal  even  if  not 
with  such  obvious  truth.  I  do  not  suppose  that  anybody  will 
dispute  this;  otherwise  I  should  dwell  on  it  longer,  so  as  to  place 
it  beyond  a  doubt.  I  will  take  it  then  for  admitted  that  in  all 
scientific  religions,  in  all  our  modern  religions  that  deny  a  future 
life  and  a  revelation,  the  religion  of  Humanity  is  an  essential,  is 
indeed  the  main,  ingredient.  Let  us  now  consider  with  a  little 
more  exactness  what,  as  a  series  of  propositions,  this  religion  of 
Humanity  is. 

Every  religious  doctrine  has  some  idea  at  the  bottom  of  it 
far  simpler  than  the  propositions  in  which  alone  it  can  be  stated 
logically.  Let  us  see  what  is  the  idea  at  the  bottom  of  the  reli- 
gious doctrine  of  Humanity.  It  appeals  to  us  most  forcibly  per- 
haps under  its  negative  aspect.  Under  that  aspect  we  may  seize 
it  completely,  thus.     Let  us  take  Shakespeare's  lines  — 

Life  is  a  tale, 
Told  by  an  idiot  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing. 

Let  us  realize  fully  all  that  these  lines  mean.  The  idea  in  ques- 
tion js  a  protest  against  that  meaning. 

In  this  form,  however,  there  is  nothing  scientific  about  it.  It 
is  merely  the  protest  of  an  individual  based  on  his  own  emotions, 
and  any  other  individual  may  with  equal  force  contradict  it. 
To  make  it  scientific  it  must  be  transferred  to  a  different  basis 
—  from  the  subjective  experience  of  the  individual  to  the  objec- 
tive history  of  the  race.  The  value  to  each  man  of  his  own  per- 
sonal lot  depends  entirely  on  what  each  man  thinks  it  is.  No  one 
else  can  observe  it ;  therefore  no  one  else  can  dispute  about  it. 
But  the  lot  of  the  race  at  large  is  open  to  the  observation  of  all. 
It  is  obvious  to  all  that  this  lot  is  always  changing,  and  the 
nature  of  these  changes,  whether  they  have  any  meaning  in 
them  or  none,  is  not  a  matter  of  opinion,  but  of  facts  and  induc- 
tions from  facts.  The  religious  doctrine  of  Humanity  asserts 
that  they  have  a  meaning.  It  asserts  that  they  follow  a  certain 
rational  order,  and  that  whether  or  no  they  are  related  to  the 


1 68  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

purposes  of  any  God,  they  have  a  constant  and  a  definite  relation 
to  ourselves.  It  asserts  that,  taken  as  a  whole,  they  have  been, 
are,  and  will  be,  always  working  together  —  though  it  may  be 
very  slowly  —  to  improve  the  kind  of  happiness  possible  for  the 
human  being,  and  to  increase  the  numbers  by  whom  such  happi- 
ness will  be  enjoyed. 

Here,  put  in  its  logical  and  categorical  form,  is  the  primary 
doctrine  common  to  all  our  scientific  religions.  The  instant,  how- 
ever, it  is  thus  expressed,  another  proposition,  through  a  process 
of  logical  chemistry,  adheres  to  it  and  becomes  part  of  its  struc- 
ture. This  proposition  relates  not  to  the  tendencies  of  the  race, 
but  to  the  constitution  of  the  average  individual  character.  It 
asserts,  and  very  truly,  that  a  natural  element  in  that  character 
is  sympathy ;  but  it  asserts  more  than  this.  It  asserts  that  sym- 
pathy, even  as  it  exists  now,  is  a  feeling  far  stronger  and  wider 
than  has  usually  been  supposed ;  that  it  is  capable,  even  now, 
when  once  the  idea  of  progress  has  been  apprehended,  of  making 
the  fortunes  of  the  race  a  part  of  the  fortunes  of  the  individual, 
and  inspiring  the  individual  to  work  for  the  progress  in  which  he 
shares ;  and  it  asserts  that,  strong  as  sympathy  is  now,  it  will 
acquire,  as  time  goes  on,  a  strength  incalculably  greater. 

These  two  propositions  united  may  be  summed  up  thus.  The 
Human  Race  as  a  whole  is  a  progressive  and  improving  organ- 
ism ;  and  the  conscience,  on  the  part  of  the  individual  that  such 
is  the  case,  will  be  the  principal  cause  of  its  continued  progress 
in  the  future,  and  will  make  the  individual  a  devoted  and  happy 
partaker  of  it. 

Here  is  the  religion  of  Humanity  reduced  to  its  simplest  ele- 
ments. I  have  called  it  the  religion  of  Humanity  because  the 
name  is  now  familiar,  and  may  help  to  show  the  reader  what  it  is 
I  am  talking  about.  But  having  used  it  thus  far,  I  shall  now 
beg  leave  to  change  it,  and  instead  of  the  religion  of  Humanity ' 
I  shall  speak  of  the  creed  of  Optimism.  For  my  present  purpose 
it  is  a  great  deal  clearer.  A  religion  is  a  creed  touched  with  emo- 
tion ;  a  creed  is  nothing  but  a  dry  series  of  propositions.  My 
present  purpose  is  simply  to  examine  two  dry  propositions,  and 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES  OF   OPTIMISM  169 

I  will  put  all  questions  of  emotion  as  far  as  possible  into  the  back- 
ground. I  am  aware  that  the  word  Optimism  is  sometimes  used 
with  a  meaning  which  many  devotees  of  the  religion  of  Humanity 
would  repudiate.  George  Eliot,  for  instance,  declared  she  was 
not  an  Optimist.  Things  were  not  for  the  best,  she  said ;  but 
they  were  always  tending  to  get  better.  She  accordingly  said 
that  she  would  sooner  describe  herself  as  a  Meliorist.  Nobody 
again  lays  greater  or  more  solemn  weight  on  the  doctrine  of  prog- 
ress than  does  Mr.  John  Morley ;  and  yet  nobody  would  more 
bitterly  ridicule  the  doctrines  of  Dr.  Pangloss.  But  in  spite  of 
the  sober  and  even  somber  view  which  such  thinkers  take  of  the 
human  lot,  they  still  believe  that  it  holds  some  distinct  and 
august  meaning,  that  the  tides  of  affairs,  however  troubled,  do 
not  eddy  aimlessly,  and  do  not  flow  towards  the  darkness,  but 
keep  due  on  towards  the  light,  however  distant.  They  beheve, 
in  short,  that  the  human  lot  has  something  in  it,  which  makes  it, 
in  the  eyes  of  all  who  can  see  clearly,  a  thing  to  be  acquiesced 
in  not  merely  with  resignation,  but  devoutness.  The  soberest 
adherents  of  the  religion  of  Humanity  admit  as  much  as  this; 
and  no  violence  is  done  to  the  meaning,  or  even  to  the  associa- 
tions of  the  word,  if  all  who  admit  thus  much,  from  the  most  to 
the  least  sanguine,  are  classed  together  under  the  common  name 
of  Optimists. 

And  now  having  seen  what  Optimism  is,  let  us  before  going 
farther,  make  ourselves  quite  clear  as  to  what  results  on  life  its 
exponents  claim  for  it.  They  do  not  claim  for  it,  as  has  been 
sometimes  claimed  for  Christianity,  that  it  is  the  foundation  of 
the  moral  code.  Our  modern  Optimists,  without  a  single  excep- 
tion, hold  the  foundations  of  the  moral  code  to  be  social.  Ac- 
cording to  their  theory,  all  its  cardinal  precepts  have  been  the 
results  not  of  beUef,  but  of  experience,  and  simply  represent  the 
conditions  essential  to  social  union.  Belief,  in  certain  important 
ways,  may  modify  them;  but  it  neither  created  them  nor  can 
substantially  change  them.  Christianity,  for  instance,  has  put 
chastity  on  a  pedestal,  but  it  was  not  Christianity  that  made 
adultery  a  crime,  nor  would  the  completest  atheism  enable  us  to 


lyo  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

construct  a  society  which  could  live  and  thrive  without  some 
sexual  discipline.  This  is  the  view  taken  by  modern  science,  and 
we  may  all  accept  it,  as  far  as  it  goes,  for  true.  Since  then  the 
propositions  which  compose  the  creed  of  Optimism  are  not  prop- 
ositions from  which  the  moral  code  is  deduced,  what  moral  re- 
sult is  supposed  to  spring  from  an  assent  to  them  ?  The  result  is 
supposed  to  be  this  —  not  any  new  assent  to  the  reasonableness 
of  that  code,  but  a  new  heart  in  obeying  it.  In  other  words,  the 
end  of  moral  conduct  being  the  welfare  of  society,  our  assent  to 
the  creed  of  Optimism  makes  that  welfare  incalculably  nearer 
and  dearer  to  us  than  it  would  be  otherwise,  and  converts  a  mere 
avoidance  of  such  overt  acts  as  would  injure  it  into  a  willing,  a 
constant,  an  eager  effort  to  promote  it.  This  is  what  Optimism, 
when  assented  to,  and  acting  on  the  emotions,  claims  to  do  for 
conduct;  and  indeed  it  is  no  sHght  thing.  It  is  a  thing  that 
makes  all  the  difference  between  the  life  of  a  race  of  brutes,  and 
the  Hfe  of  a  race  with  something  which  we  have  hitherto  called 
divine  in  it.  For  those  who  deny  any  other  hfe  but  the  present, 
what  Optimism  announces  is  practically  the  re-creation  of  the 
soul,  and  our  redemption  from  the  death  of  an  existence  merely 
selfish  and  animal.  Optimism  announces  this,  and  of  all  scien- 
tific creeds  it  alone  pretends  to  do  so ;  and  if  its  propositions  are 
true,  there  are  plausible  grounds  for  arguing  that  a  genuine  reli- 
gion of  the  kind  described  will  result  from  it. 

And  now  we  come  to  the  question  which  I  propose  to  ask  — 
Are  its  propositions  true  ?  Or  are  we  certain  that  they  are  true  ? 
And  if  we  are  certain,  on  what  kinds  of  evidence  do  we  base  our 
certainty  ?  We  have  already  got  them  into  condition  to  be  sub- 
mitted to  this  inquiry.  We  have  stripped  them,  so  to  speak,  for 
the  operation.  There  they  stand,  two  naked  propositions, 
whose  sole  claim  to  our  acceptance  is  that  they  are  scientific 
truths,  that  they  are  genuine  inductions  from  carefully  observed 
facts,  that  they  have  been  reached  legitimately  by  the  daylight 
of  reason,  that  prejudice  and  emotion  have  had  nothing  to  do 
with  the  matter ;  that  they  stand,  in  short,  on  precisely  the  same 
footing  as  any  accepted  generalization  of  physics  or  physiology. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  171 

One  of  them,  as  we  have  seen,  is  a  proposition  relating  to  the 
changes  of  human  history;  the  other  is  a  proposition  relating  to 
the  sympathetic  capacity  of  the  individual. 

I  propose  to  show  that  the  first  is  not  as  yet  a  legitimate  gen- 
eralization at  all ;  that  the  facts  of  the  case  as  at  present  known, 
not  only  are  insufficient,  but  point  in  two  opposite  ways,  that  the 
certainty  with  which  the  proposition  is  held  by  our  scientific  in- 
structors is  demonstrably  due  to  some  source  quite  other  than  sci- 
entific evidence,  and  finally,  that  even  if,  in  any  sense,  the  propo- 
sition should  be  found  true,  the  truth  would  be  found  inadequate 
to  the  expectations  based  on  it. 

This  is  what  I  propose  to  show  with  regard  to  the  proposition 
asserting  progress.  With  regard  to  the  proposition  that  deals 
with  human  sympathy,  I  propose  to  show  that  it  is  less  scientific 
still,  that  whilst  here  and  there  an  isolated  fact,  imperfectly  ap- 
prehended, may  suggest  it,  the  great  mass  of  facts  absolutely 
and  hopelessly  contradict  it,  and  furthermore,  that  even  grant- 
ing its  truth,  its  truth  would  cut  both  ways,  and  annihilate  the 
conclusions  it  supported. 

This  last  proposition  we  will  consider  first.  Let  us  repeat  it 
in  set  terms.  It  asserts  that  the  sympathetic  feelings  of  the 
average  man  are  sufficiently  strong  and  comprehensive  to  make 
the  alleged  progress  of  the  human  race  a  source  of  appreciable 
and  constant  satisfaction  to  himself.  And  the  satisfaction  in 
question  is  no  mere  pensive  sentiment,  no  occasional  sunbeam 
gilding  an  hour  of  idleness ;  but  it  is  a  feeling  so  robust  and 
strong  that  it  can  not  only  hold  its  own  amongst  our  ordinary 
joys  and  sorrows,  but  actually  impart  its  own  color  to  both.  It 
will  also,  as  progress  continues,  increase  in  strength  and  impor- 
tance. 

Now  in  considering  if  this  is  true,  let  us  grant  all  that  can  be 
granted  ;  let  us  grant,  for  argument's  sake,  that  progress  is  an 
acknowledged  reality  —  that  human  history,  if  regarded  in  a  way 
sufficiently  comprehensive,  shows  us,  written  across  it  in  gigantic 
characters,  some  record  of  general  and  still  continuing  improve- 
ment.    Are  our  characters  such  that  the  knowledge  of  this  fact 


172  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

will  really  cause  us  any  flow  of  spirits  sufficiently  vivid  to  take 
rank  amongst  our  personal  joys,  and  to  buoy  us  up  in  personal 
despondency  and  sorrow  ?  Or  again,  are  they  such  that  this  gen- 
eral improvement  of  the  race  will  be  an  object  nearer  our  hearts 
than  our  own  private  prosperity,  and  will  really  incite  us  to  sacri- 
fice our  strength  and  our  pleasures  to  its  promotion  ?  To  these 
questions  there  are  two  answers,  which  I  shall  give  separately. 

The  first  answer  is,  that  from  one  point  of  view  they  are 
simply  questions  of  degree.  For  instance,  supposing  it  were 
suddenly  made  known  to  all  of  us,  that  some  extraordinary 
ameUoration  in  the  human  lot  would,  owing  to  certain  causes, 
accomplish  itself  during  the  next  ten  days,  the  whole  race  would 
probably  experience  a  sense  of  overmastering  joy,  through  which 
ordinary  sorrows  and  annoyances  would  hardly  make  themselves 
felt.  Or  again,  should  it  be  known  that  this  glorious  piece  of 
progress  were  contingent  on  every  one  making  some  specified 
effort,  we  may  safely  say  that  for  the  time  very  few  men  would 
be  idle.  And  again,  should  it  be  known  that  by  indulgence  in  per- 
sonal passion  the  results  of  this  progress  would  be  grievously  and 
visibly  diminished,  for  ten  days,  doubtless,  self-restraint  would  be 
general.  But  in  proportion  as  we  suppose  the  rate  of  the  prog- 
ress to  be  slower,  and  the  importance  to  the  result  of  each  sepa- 
rate act  to  be  less,  our  satisfaction  in  the  one  and  our  anxiety 
about  the  other  would  dwindle,  till  the  former  would  be  percep- 
tible only  in  the  hush  of  all  other  emotions ;  and  the  latter,  as 
affecting  action,  would  cease  to  be  perceptible  at  all. 

To  convince  ourselves  that  such  is  the  law  which  this  feeling 
would  follow,  we  have  only  to  look  at  the  commonest  experiences 
of  life ;  for  the  sympathy  with  general  progress  of  which  we  are 
alleged  to  be  capable,  is  not  supposed  to  have  anything  miracu- 
lous about  it,  but  to  be  simply  a  particular  apphcation  of  a 
faculty  in  daily  exercise.  Now  an  ordinary  man  is  delighted  if 
some  great  good  fortune  happens  to  some  other  who  is  very  near 
and  dear  to  him  —  if  his  son  or  his  daughter  or  his  brother,  for 
instance,  marries  well  and  happily;  but  if  the  same  good  for- 
tune happens  to  some  unknown  connection,  his  dehght  is  at  best 


THE   SCIENTIFIC  BASES   OF  OPTIMISM  173 

of  a  very  lukewarm  kind ;  whilst  if  he  hears  of  a  happy  marriage 
in  Germany,  it  is  nonsense  to  pretend  that  he  is  really  delighted 
at  all.  Again,  if  he  reads  in  the  Times  of  an  accident  to  a  train 
in  America,  he  says  it  is  shocking,  and  goes  on  with  his  breakfast; 
but  if  a  telegram  comes  to  inform  him  that  his  son  was  amongst 
the  passengers,  he  at  once  is  in  torture  till  he  learns  if  his  son  is 
safe.  So  too  with  regard  to  conduct,  the  consequences  to  be  ex- 
pected from  any  given  act  will  influence  his  choice  or  his 
avoidance  of  it  in  proportion  to  their  nearness  or  their  remote- 
ness, to  their  certainty  or  their  uncertainty,  to  the  clearness  with 
which  he  is  able  to  grasp  them,  and  also  to  their  objective  magni- 
tude relative  to  the  amount  of  effort  required  from  himself  in 
doing  the  act  or  in  abstaining  from  it.  This  is  evident  in  cases 
where  the  consequences  are  consequences  to  the  doer.  A  reward 
to  be  given  in  ten  years  time  stimulates  no  one  as  much  as  a 
reward  to  be  given  to-morrow ;  nor  does  a  fit  of  the  gout  hover- 
ing dimly  in  the  future  keep  the  hand  from  the  bottle  Hke  a 
twinge  already  threatening.  Again,  if  the  ill  consequences  of 
an  act  otherwise  pleasant  have  in  them  the  smallest  uncertainty, 
a  numerous  class  is  always  ready  to  risk  them;  and  as  the  un- 
certainty becomes  greater,  this  class  increases.  All  intemper- 
ance, all  gambHng,  all  extravagance,  all  sports  such  as  cricket 
and  hunting,  and  the  very  possibility  of  a  soldier's  life  as  a 
profession,  depend  on  this  fact.  Few  men  would  enlist  if  they 
knew  that  they  would  be  shot  in  a  twelvemonth;  few  men 
would  go  hunting  if  they  knew  they  would  come  home  on  a 
stretcher.  And  what  is  true  of  men's  acts  regarded  as  affecting 
themselves  is  equally  true  of  them  regarded  as  affecting  others. 
Sympathy  follows  the  same  laws  as  selfishness.  Supposing  a 
young  man  knew  that  if  he  did  a  certain  action  his  mother  would 
instantly  hear  of  it  and  die  of  grief  in  consequence,  he  would  be 
a  young  man  of  very  exceptional  badness  if  this  knowledge  were 
not  a  violent  check  on  him.  But  suppose  the  act  were  only  one 
of  a  series,  making  his  general  conduct  only  a  little  worse,  and 
suppose  that  the  chance  of  his  mother's  hearing  of  it  were  slight, 
and  that  it  would,  if  she  did  hear  of  it,  cost  her  only  one  extra 


174  WILLIAM   HURREL   MALLOCK 

sigh,  the  check  so  strong  in  the  first  case  would  in  this  be  ex- 
tremely feeble.  Here  again  is  a  point  more  important  still.  In 
the  case  of  any  act,  regarded  as  affecting  others,  which  involves 
effort  or  sacrifice,  the  motive  to  perform  it  depends  for  its 
strength  or  weakness  on  the  proportion  between  the  amount  oi 
the  sacrifice  and  the  amount  of  good  to  be  achieved  by  it.  A 
man  may  be  willing  to  die  to  save  his  wife's  honor,  but  he  will 
hardly  be  willing  to  do  so  to  save  her  new  ball  dress,  even  though 
she  herself  thinks  the  latter  of  most  value.  A  man  would  deny 
himself  one  truffle  to  keep  a  hundred  men  from  starving,  but  he 
would  not  himself  starve  to  give  a  hundred  men  one  truffle. 
The  effort  is  immense  on  one  side,  the  result  infinitesimal  on  the 
other,  and  sympathy  does  nothing  to  alter  the  unequal  balance. 
Lastly,  results  to  others,  as  apprehended  by  sympathy,  even 
when  not  small  themselves,  are  made  small  by  distance.  No 
man  thinks  so  much  of  what  will  happen  to  his  great-grand- 
children as  he  does  of  what  will  happen  to  his  children;  nor 
would  it  be  easy  to  raise  money  for  building  a  hospital  which 
would  not  be  finished  for  fifteen  hundred  years.  Sympathy  then 
with  other  people,  or  with  any  cause  or  any  object  affecting 
them,  influences  our  actions  in  proportion  as  the  people  are  near 
to  us,  or  as  the  objects  are  large,  distinct,  or  important ;  whence 
it  follows  that  to  produce  a  given  strength  of  motive,  the  more 
distant  an  object  is  the  larger  and  more  distinct  it  must  be. 

And  now  let  us  turn  again  to  the  progress  of  the  human  race ; 
and  supposing  it  to  be  a  fact,  and  accepting  it  as  described  by  its 
prophets,  let  us  consider  how  far  our  sympathies  are  really  likely 
to  be  affected  by  it.  Is  it  quick  enough  ?  Is  it  distinct  enough  ? 
Is  there  a  reasonable  proportion  between  the  efforts  demanded 
from  us  on  its  behalf,  and  the  results  to  be  anticipated  from  these 
efforts  ?  And  how  far,  in  each  individual  case,  are  the  results 
certain  or  doubtful  ? 

Now  one  of  the  first  things  which  our  scientific  Optimists  im- 
press on  us  is,  that  this  progress  is  extremely  slow.  Before  it  has 
brought  the  general  lot  to  a  condition  which  in  itself  is  even 
approximately  satisfactory,  "immeasurable  geologic  periods  of 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES  OF   OPTIMISM  175 

time,"  Mr.  Morley  tells  us,  will  have  to  intervene;  and  Mr. 
Frederic  Harrison,  in  this  Review,  a  month  or  two  since,  warned 
us  not  to  be  in  a  hurry.  He  is  far  more  sanguine  indeed  than 
Mr.  Morley;  but  even  he  thinks  that  we  must  wait  for  three 
thousand  years,  before  the  results  of  Progress  begin  to  be  worth 
talking  about.  Now,  "to  a  practical  man,"  says  Mr.  Harrison, 
"three  thousand  years  is  an  eternity."  I  quite  agree  with  him  ; 
to  a  practical  man  it  is ;  and  thus,  whether  his  calculations  are 
accepted,  or  Mr.  Morley's,  our  own  efforts  on  behalf  of  the 
general  welfare  are  divided  by  a  practical  eternity  from  their 
first  appreciable  fruits.  Now  since  Mr.  Harrison  refers  us  to 
practical  men,  let  us  try  to  imagine,  guided  by  our  common  ex- 
perience, how  the  knowledge  that  this  kind  of  progress  was  a 
reality  would  be  likely  to  affect  the  practical  men  we  know. 
Let  us  first  think  how  it  would  affect  their  feelings ;  and  then 
how,  through  their  feelings,  it  would  affect  their  actions.  The 
two  questions  are  separate,  and  involve  different  sets  of  consid- 
erations. 

To  begin  then  with  the  question  of  mere  feeling.  If  we  wish 
to  form  some  conjecture  as  to  how  men  are  likely  to  feel  about  the 
things  of  the  remote  future,  we  cannot  do  better  than  resort  to  a 
test  which  is  suggested  to  us  by  the  Optimists  themselves,  and 
consider  how  men  feel  about  the  things  of  the  remote  past.  Of 
course,  as  we  may  see  in  the  case  of  a  man's  own  life,  the  feel- 
ings excited  by  the  past  differ  in  kind  from  those  excited  by  the 
future ;  but  the  intensity  of  the  one,  we  may  say  with  confidence, 
is  a  fair  measure  of  the  intensity  of  the  other.  If  a  man  who  has 
caused  himself  suffering  by  his  own  acts,  forgets  that  suffering 
the  first  moment  it  is  over,  he  is  not  likely  to  trouble  himself 
about  the  possibility  of  its  repetition.  And  the  same  thing  will 
hold  good  as  to  our  feeling  for  past  and  future  generations. 
Events  that  are  going  to  happen  three  thousand  years  hence  will 
hardly  be  more  to  us  than  events  which  happened  three  thousand 
years  ago.  Now  what  man  in  any  practical  sense  cares  anything 
about  what  happened  three  thousand  years  ago  ?  To  repeople 
the  cities  and  temples  of  the  past  —  Memphis,  and  Thebes,  and 


176  WILLIAM   HURREL   MALLOCK 

Babylon  —  to  see  at  the  call  of  the  imagination  the  earth  give 
up  her  dead,  and  buried  generations  come  and  go  before  us,  is  no 
doubt  an  occupation  that  many  of  us  find  fascinating.  But  the 
pleasure  of  watching  these  d/Acv/^va  Kaprjva  ^  has  nothing  akin  to  any 
personal  interest  in  them.  Neither,  again,  has  the  interest  taken 
in  them  by  the  historian.  Were  we  to  learn  to-day  for  the  first 
time  that  all  the  plagues  of  Egypt  had  been  repeated  ten  times 
over,  or  that  a  million  slaves  had  been  tortured  by  Pharaoh  Necho, 
nobody's  spirits  would  be  in  the  least  damped  by  the  intelligence. 
The  strongest  feelings  producible  by  the  longest  contemplation 
of  the  greatest  triumphs  and  the  greatest  misfortunes  of  antiq- 
uity are  mere  phantoms,  mere  wraiths,  mere  reflections  of  the 
reflections  of  shadows,  when  compared  with  the  annoyance  produ- 
cible by  a  smoky  chimney.  Supposing  we  were  to  discover  that 
three  thousand  years  ago  there  was  a  perfectly  happy  and  a  per- 
fectly civilized  society,  the  conditions  of  which  were  still  per- 
fectly plain  to  us,  the  discovery  no  doubt  would  be  intensely 
interesting  if  it  afforded  us  any  model  that  we  could  ourselves 
imitate.  But  our  interest  would  be  centered  in  the  thought  not 
that  other  people  had  been  happy,  but  that  we,  or  that  our  chil- 
dren, were  going  to  be.  The  two  feelings  are  totally  different. 
Supposing  we  were  to  discover  on  some  Egyptian  papyrus  a  re- 
ceipt for  making  a  certain  delicious  tart,  the  pleasure  we  might 
take  in  eating  the  tart  ourselves  would  have  nothing  to  do  with 
any  gratification  at  the  pleasure  it  gave  Sesostris.  The  conclu- 
sion, then,  that  we  may  draw  from  our  obvious  apathy  as  to  the 
happiness  of  our  remote  ancestors  is  that  we  are  really  equally 
apathetic  as  to  the  happiness  of  our  remote  descendants.  As  the 
past  ceases  to  be  remote  — as  it  becomes  more  and  more  recent, 
some  faint  pulsations  of  sympathy  begin  to  stir  in  us ;  when  we 
get  to  the  lives  of  our  grandfathers  the  feeling  may  be  quite 
recognizable ;  when  we  get  to  the  lives  of  our  fathers,  it  may  be 
strong.  This  is  true ;  and  the  same  thing  holds  good  as  to  the 
future.  We  may  feel  strongly  about  the  lives  of  our  children, 
more  weakly  about  the  lives  of  our  grandchildren,  and  then  pres- 

1  Fleeting  shades.  —  Editors. 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  177 

ently  we  cease  to  have  any  feeling  at  all.  Were  we  promised 
that  progress  in  the  future  would  be  quicker  than  progress  in 
the  past,  the  case  would  change  in  proportion  to  this  promised 
quickness ;  but  this  is  precisely  what  we  are  not  promised. 

I  said  that  this  appeal  to  the  past  was  suggested  by  the  Op- 
timists themselves.  The  feelings  indeed  which  they  dwell  upon 
as  producible  are  somewhat  different  from  those  on  which  I  have 
just  commented.  But  they  are  less  to  the  point  as  indicating 
the  possibility  of  any  sympathy  with  the  future,  and  are  seen 
when  analyzed  to  be  even  more  fantastic.  What  the  Optimist 
tells  us  that  we  ought  to  feel,  can  feel,  and  if  we  do  but  think 
over  things,  must  feel,  is  not  so  much  gladness  or  sorrow  at  our 
ancestors  having  been  happy  or  unhappy,  as  gratitude  towards 
them  for  the  happiness  that  their  efforts  have  secured  for  us. 
Now  the  efforts  of  our  ancestors  have  secured  us  a  great  number 
of  things ;  if  they  have  secured  us  our  happiness  they  have 
secured  us  also  our  afflictions.  If  we  owe  to  them  our  present 
medical  skill,  we  also  owe  to  them  consumption,  and  gout,  and 
scrofula.  Our  gratitude  therefore  is  to  be  of  a  somewhat  eclectic 
character.  Its  object  is  not  the  whole  of  our  ancestors,  but  only 
that  proportion  of  them  whose  lives  have  been  beneficial  to  us. 
But  we  can  never  know  accurately  what  that  proportion  is.  It 
is  an  undistinguished  part  of  a  dimly  apprehended  whole.  How 
are  we  to  be  grateful  to  a  shadowy  abstraction  like  this  ?  Mr. 
Harrison  might  tell  us,  and  he  actually  does  tell  us,  that  we 
know  our  ancestral  benefactors  through  certain  illustrious  speci- 
mens of  them  —  "poets,  artists,  thinkers,  teachers,  rulers,  dis- 
coverers;" indeed,  he  says  that  the  worshiping  gratitude  in 
question  "is  felt  in  its  most  definite  mode  when  we  enter  into 
communion"  with  such  great  men  as  these.  This  no  doubt 
makes  the  idea  clearer ;  but  it  only  does  so  to  make  its  absurdity 
clearer  also.  Some  great  men  have  done  good  to  posterity  — 
good  which  we  feel  now ;  but  many  have  done  evil ;  and  there 
are  wide  differences  of  opinion  as  to  which  of  them  has  done 
what.  Is  Frederick  the  Great,  for  instance,  to  be  the  object  of 
worshiping  gratitude,  or  of   aversion?     Are  we   to  enter  into 


178  WILLIAM  HURREL   MALLOCK 

communion  with  him,  or  avoid  him?  Or  supposing  all  such 
doubts  as  these  to  be  settled,  and  the  calendar  of  the  saints  of 
progress  to  be  edited  to  the  satisfaction  of  us  all,  there  are  difl& 
culties  still  greater  behind.  Many  men  whose  actions  have  been 
undoubtedly  beneficial,  have  been  personally  of  exceedingly 
doubtful  character;  the  good  they  have  done  to  posterity  has 
been  in  many  cases  unforeseen  and  unintended  by  themselves ; 
or  even  if  they  have  foreseen  it,  love  of  posterity  has  not  been 
their  motive  in  doing  it.  Who,  for  instance,  feels  any  worship- 
ing gratitude  to  Lord  Bacon?  We  may  admire  his  genius,  or 
may  recognize  his  services ;  but  benefit  to  us  was  not  his  object 
in  producing  them,  and  therefore  our  gratitude  is  not  their  rec- 
ompense. It  is  as  irrational  to  be  grateful  for  an  unintended 
benefit  as  it  is  to  be  angry  for  an  unintended  injury.  Of  course 
we  have  some  feeling  about  such  great  men.  It  is  shown  in  its 
strongest  form  in  the  people  we  call  hero-worshipers.  But  the 
feeling  of  the  hero-worshiper  is  the  very  reverse  of  the  vica- 
rious feeling  for  humanity  postulated  by  our  Optimists.  The 
hero-worshiper  admires  his  heroes  because  they  differ  from  the 
rest  of  mankind,  not  because  they  resemble  and  represent  them. 
Even  could  we  imagine  that  one  or  two  great  men  actually  fore- 
saw our  existence,  and  toiled  for  us  with  a  prophetic  love,  we 
cannot  imagine  this  of  the  great  masses  of  our  predecessors. 
So  far  as  they  are  concerned,  we  are  the  accidental  inheritors  of 
goods  which  they  laid  up  for  themselves ;  and  if  there  is  any  rea- 
son to  praise  them  for  what  they  have  done  well,  there  is  equal 
reason  to  grumble  at  them  for  not  having  done  it  better. 

If  these  reflections  do  not  appear  conclusive,  let  us  turn  from 
our  ancestral  benefactors  to  our  remote  contemporary  bene- 
factors. Our  attitude  towards  them  will  enlighten  us  some- 
what further.  To  some  of  the  remotest  of  our  contemporaries 
we  owe  some  of  our  homeliest  comforts.  To  take  one  instance 
out  of  many,  we  owe  tea  to  the  Chinese.  Now  does  any  English 
tea-driuker  feel  any  worshiping  gratitude  towards  the  Chinese  ? 
We  care  for  them  as  little  as  they  care  for  us ;  and  if  learnt  to- 
morrow that  the  whole  Chinese  race  was  a  myth,  it  is  doubtful 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES   OF   OPTIMISM  179 

if  one  of  us  would  eat  a  worse  dinner  for  the  news.  If  we  feel  so 
little  about  remote  benefactors  who  are  living,  we  shall  hardly 
feel  more  about  remote  benefactors  who  are  dead;  and  we 
shall  feel  less  about  remote  recipients  of  benefits  who  will  not  be 
born  for  an  eternity. 

To  sum  up,  then,  what  experience  teaches  us  as  the  extent  to 
which  an  idea  like  that  of  human  progress,  moving  imperceptibly 
to  a  goal  incalculably  distant,  is  able  to  affect  the  feelings  of  the 
ordinary  individual,  we  must  say  that  there  is  no  evidence  of  any 
sort  or  kind  that  for  practical  purposes  it  is  able  to  affect  them 
at  all. 

And  now  let  us  pass  on  from  this  consideration  to  another. 
The  emotions  required  by  the  Optimist  we  have  shown  to  be  not 
possible.  Let  us  now  consider  how,  supposing  they  were  possible, 
they  would  be  likely  to  influence  action.  We  shall  see  that  their 
influence,  at  the  best,  would  be  necessarily  very  feeble ;  and  that 
it  would  be  enfeebled  by  the  very  conditions  which  we  mainly 
counted  on  to  strengthen  it.  Supposing  the  human  race  could 
last  only  another  two  years,  even  Mr.  Harrison  would  admit  that 
we  might  well  be  indifferent  about  improving  it,  and  feel  sad 
rather  than  elated  at  its  destiny.  As  it  is,  Mr.  Harrison,  though 
he  cannot  say  that  it  is  eternal,  yet  promises  it  a  duration  which 
is  an  eternity  for  all  practical  purposes ;  and  he  conceives  that 
in  doing  this  he  is  investing  it  with  interest  and  with  dignity. 
He  thinks  that,  within  limits,  the  longer  the  race  lasts,  the  more 
worthy  of  the  service  it  will  seem  to  our  enlightened  reason. 
One  of  the  most  solemn  reflections  which  he  presses  on  our  hearts 
is  this,  that  the  consequences  of  each  one  of  our  lives  will  con- 
tinue ad  infinitum. 

Now,  from  one  point  of  view  Mr.  Harrison  is  perfectly  right. 
Granting  that  we  believe  in  progress,  and  that  our  feelings  are 
naturally  affected  by  it,  among  the  chief  elements  in  it  which 
cause  it  thus  to  affect  them  will  be  its  practical  eternity  —  its 
august  magnitude.  But  the  moment  we  put  these  feelings,  as 
it  were,  into  harness,  and  ask  them  to  produce  for  us  action  and 
self-sacrifice,  we  shall  find  that  the  very  elements  which  have 


i8o  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

excited  the  wish  to  act  have  an  equal  tendency  to  enervate  the 
will.  We  shall  find  that,  as  the  porter  in  Macbeth  says,  they  are 
"equivocators."  They  "provoke  the  desire,  but  take  away  the 
performance."  For  the  longer  the  period  we  assign  to  the  dura- 
tion of  the  human  race  and  of  progress,  the  mightier  the  propor- 
tions of  the  cause  we  are  asked  to  work  for,  the  smaller  will  be  the 
result  of  our  efforts  in  proportion  to  the  great  whole ;  less  and  less 
would  each  additional  effort  be  missed.  If  the  consequences  of 
our  lives  ceased  two  years  after  our  death,  the  power  of  these  con- 
sequences, it  is  admitted,  would  be  slight  either  as  a  deterrent  or  a 
stimulant.  Mr.  Harrison  thinks  that  they  will  gain  force,  through 
our  knowledge  that  they  will  last  ad  infinitum.  But  he  quite  for- 
gets the  other  side  of  the  question,  that  the  longer  they  last  they 
are  a  constantly  diminishing  quantity,  ever  less  and  less  appreci- 
able by  any  single  human  being,  and  that  we  can  only  think  of 
them  as  infinite  at  the  expense  of  thinking  of  them  as  infinitesi- 
mal. 

Now,  as  I  pointed  out  before,  it  is  a  rule  of  human  conduct 
that  there  must  to  produce  an  act  be  some  equality  between  the 
effort  and  the  expected  result ;  but  in  the  case  of  any  effort  ex- 
pended for  the  sake  of  general  progress  there  is  no  equality  at  all. 
And  not  only  is  there  no  equality,  but  there  is  no  certain  connec- 
tion. The  best-meant  efforts  may  do  harm  instead  of  good ;  and 
if  good  will  be  really  done  by  them,  it  is  impossible  to  realize  what 
good.  How  many  workmen  of  the  present  day  would  refuse  an 
annuity  of  two  hundred  a  year,  on  the  chance  that  by  doing  so 
they  might  raise  the  rate  of  wages  one  per  cent  in  the  course  of 
three  thousand  years  ?  But  why  talk  of  three  thousand  years  ? 
Our  care,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  does  not  extend  three  hundred. 
Do  we  any  of  us  deny  ourselves  a  single  scuttle  of  coals,  so  as  to 
make  our  coal  fields  last  for  one  more  unknown  generation  ?  It 
is  perfectly  plain  we  do  not.  The  utter  inefficacy  of  the  motives 
supplied  by  devotion  to  progress,  for  its  own  sake,  may  at  once 
be  realized  by  comparing  them  with  the  motives  supplied  by  de- 
votion to  it  for  the  sake  of  Christianity.  The  least  thing  that 
the  Christian  does  to  others  he  does  to  Christ.     However  slight 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES   OF   OPTIMISM  i8i 

the  result,  Christ  judges  it  by  the  effort  and  the  intention ;  a  sin- 
gle mite  may  be  valued  by  him  as  much  as  a  thousand  pounds; 
and  however  far  away  from  us  may  be  the  human  beings  we  bene- 
fit, Christ,  who  is  served  through  them,  is  near.  But  the  naked 
doctrine  of  progress  has  no  idea  in  it  at  all  analogous  to  this  idea 
of  Christ.  Compared  with  Christianity  it  is  like  an  optical  in- 
strument with  some  essential  lens  wanting.  Christianity  made 
our  infinitesimal  influence  infinite ;  scientific  Optimism  makes 
our  infinite  influence  infinitesimal. 

But  perhaps  it  will  be  said  that  the  idea  of  general  progress  is 
not  supposed  to  move  and  stimulate  us  directly,  but  is  embodied 
for  each  one  of  us  in  some  homely  and  definite  service  which  we 
can  do  to  those  about  us ;  and  that  we  do  not  do  such  service  for 
the  love  of  the  race  in  general,  but  rise  to  the  general  love  through 
doing  the  particular  services.  The  answer  to  this  is  obvious. 
If  this  is  all  that  is  claimed  for  the  idea  of  progress,  all  claim  for 
it  that  it  influences  action  is  abandoned.  It  does  not  tend  to 
make  men  energetic,  philanthropic,  and  useful  who  are  not  so  nat- 
urally. Such  men  it  leaves  exactly  as  it  finds  them  —  the  self- 
ish, selfish  still,  and  the  filthy,  filthy  still.  It  affects  those  only 
who  act  well  independently  of  it ;  and  all  that  it  can  be  supposed 
to  do  for  these  is  not  to  make  them  choose  a  particular  line  of 
conduct,  but  to  give  them  a  new  excuse  for  being  pleased  with 
themselves  at  having  chosen  it.  This  brings  us  back  to  the  ques- 
tion of  mere  feeling ;  and  the  feeling  supposed  to  be  produced  by 
the  idea  of  progress,  we  have  already  seen  to  be  a  mere  fancy  and 
illusion.  As  I  have  taken  special  care  to  point  out,  nobody 
claims  for  Optimism  that  it  supplies  us  with  a  rule  of  right. 
That  is  supplied  by  social  science  and  experience.  What  is 
claimed  for  it  is,  that  it  gives  us  new  motives  for  obeying  this 
rule,  and  a  feeling  of  blessedness  in  the  thought  that  it  is  being 
obeyed.  We  have  now  seen  that  in  no  appreciable  way  has  it 
any  tendency  to  give  us  either. 

All  this  while  we  have  been  supposing  that  progress  was  a 
reality,  and  inquiring  if  it  will  excite  certain  feelings.  Let  us 
now  reverse  our  suppositions.     Let  us  suppose  the  admittedly 


i82  WILLIAM   HURREL  MALLOCK 

real  thing  to  be  our  capacity  for  the  feelings,  and  inquire  what 
grounds  there  are  for  believing  in  the  progress  which  is  to  excite 
them.  Of  course  the  question  is  not  one  which  can  be  argued 
out  in  a  page  or  two ;  but  we  can  take  stock  in  a  general  way 
of  what  the  arguments  are.  The  first  feature  that  strikes  us  in 
human  history  is  change.  Do  these  changes  follow  any  intelli- 
gible order  ?  If  so,  to  what  extent  do  they  follow  it  ?  And  is  it 
an  order  which  can  afford  us  any  rational  satisfaction  ?  Now 
that  they  follow  some  intelligible  order  to  some  extent  is  per- 
fectly undeniable.  The  advance  of  certain  races  from  savagery 
to  civilization,  and  from  a  civilization  that  is  simple  to  a  civili- 
zation that  is  complex,  is  a  fact  staring  all  of  us  in  the  face ;  and 
with  regard  to  certain  stages  of  this  advance,  few  people  will 
seriously  deny  that  it  has  been  satisfactory.  It  is  true  that, 
putting  aside  all  theological  views  of  man,  certain  races  of 
savages  have  in  all  probability  been  the  happiest  human  animals 
that  ever  existed;  still  if  we  consider  the  earliest  condition  of 
the  races  that  have  become  civilized,  we  may  no  doubt  say  that 
up  to  a  certain  point  the  advance  of  civilization  made  life  a  bet- 
ter thing  for  them.  But  is  it  equally  plain  that  after  a  certain 
point  has  been  past,  the  continuance  of  the  advance  has  had  the 
same  sort  of  result  ?  The  inhabitants  of  France  under  Henri  IV 
may  have  been  a  happier  set  of  men  than  its  inhabitants  under 
Clovis;  but  were  its  inhabitants  under  Louis  XVI  a  happier 
set  of  men  than  its  inhabitants  under  Henri  IV?  Again,  if 
civilizations  rise,  civilizations  also  fall.  Is  it  certain  that  the 
new  civilizations  which  in  time  succeed  the  old  bring  the  human 
lot  to  a  veritably  higher  level  ?  To  answer  these  questions,  or 
even  to  realize  what  these  questions  are,  we  must  brand  into 
our  consciousness  many  considerations  which,  though  when  we 
think  of  them  they  are  truisms,  we  too  often  forget  to  think  of. 
To  begin,  then  :  Progress  for  those  who  deny  a  God  and  a  future 
life  means  nothing,  and  can  mean  nothing  but  such  changes  as 
may  make  men  happier ;  and  this  meaning  again  further  unfolds 
itself  into  a  reference  first  to  the  intensity  of  the  happiness ; 
secondly,  to  the  numbers  who  partake  in  it.     Thus,  what  is 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  183 

commonly  called  a  superior  civilization  need  not,  after  a  certain 
step,  indicate  any  real  progress.  It  may  even  be  a  disguise  of 
retrogression.  It  seems,  for  instance,  hardly  doubtful  that  in 
England  the  condition  of  the  masses  some  fifty  years  ago  was 
worse  than  it  had  been  a  hundred  years  before.  The  factory 
system  during  its  earlier  stages  of  development,  though  a  main 
element  in  the  most  rapid  advances  of  civilization  ever  known 
to  the  world,  did  certainly  not  add  for  the  time  to  the  sum  total 
of  happiness.  The  mere  fact  that  it  did  not  do  so  for  the  time 
is  in  itself  no  proof  that  it  may  not  have  done  so  since ;  but  it  is 
a  proof  that  the  most  startling  advances  in  science,  and  the  mas- 
tery over  nature  that  has  come  of  them,  need  not  necessarily  be 
things  which  in  their  immediate  results  can  give  any  satisfac- 
tion to  the  well-wishers  of  the  race  at  large.  But  we  may  say 
more  than  this.  Not  only  need  material  civilization  indicate 
no  progress  in  the  lot  of  the  race  at  large,  but  it  may  well  be 
doubted  if  it  really  adds  to  the  happiness  of  thafpart  of  the  .race 
who  receive  the  fullest  fruits  of  it.  It  is  difhcult  in  one  sense  to 
deny  that  express  trains  and  Cunard  steamships  are  improve- 
ments on  mail  coaches  or  wretched  little  sailing  boats  like  the 
Mayflower.  But  are  the  public  in  trains  happier  than  the  public 
who  went  in  coaches  ?  Is  there  more  peace  or  hope  in  the 
hearts  of  the  men  who  go  from  New  York  to  Liverpool  in-  six 
days  than  there  was  in  the  hearts  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  ?  No 
doubt  we  who  have  been  brought  up  amongst  modern  appli- 
ances should  be  made  miserable  for  the  time  if  they  were  sud- 
denly taken  away  from  us.  But  to  say  this  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  saying  that  we  are  happier  with  them  than  we  should 
have  been  if  we  had  never  had  them.  A  man  would  be  miserable 
who,  being  fat  and  fifty,  had  to  button  himself  into  the  waist- 
coat which  he  wore  when  he  had  a  waist  and  was  nineteen.  But 
this  does  not  prove  that  a  large-sized  waistcoat  makes  his  mid- 
dle age  a  happier  time  than  his  youth.  Advancing  civilization 
creates  wants,  and  it  supplies  wants ;  it  creates  habits  and  it 
ministers  to  habits ;  but  it  is  not  always  exhilarating  us  with 
fresh  surprises  of  pleasure.     Suppose,  however,  we  grant  that 


i84  WILLIAM   HURREL  MALLOCK 

up  to  a  certain  point  the  increase  of  material  wants,  together 
with  the  means  of  meeting  them,  does  add  to  happiness,  it  is 
perfectly  evident  that  there  is  a  point  where  this  result  ceases. 
A  workman  who  dines  daily  off  beefsteak  and  beer  may  be 
happier  than  one  whose  dinner  is  water  and  black  bread;  but 
a  man  whose  dinner  is  ten  different  dishes  need  not  be  happier 
than  the  man  who  puts  up  with  four.  There  is  a  certain  point, 
therefore,  not  an  absolute  point,  but  a  relative  point,  beyond 
which  advances  in  material  civilization  are  not  progress  any 
longer  —  not  even  supposing  all  classes  to  have  a  proportionate 
share  in  it.  Accordingly  the  fact  that  inventions  multiply, 
that  commerce  extends,  that  distances  are  annihilated,  that 
country  gentlemen  have  big  battues,  that  farmers  keep  fine 
hunters,  that  their  daughters  despise  butter  making,  and  that 
even  agricultural  laborers  have  pink  window  blinds,  is  not  in 
itself  any  proof  of  general  progress.  Progress  is  a  tendency 
not  to  an  extreme,  but  to  a  mean. 

Let  us  now  pass  to  another  class  of  facts,  generally  held  to 
show  that  progress  is  a  reality;  namely,  the  great  men  that 
civilization  has  produced.  Let  us,  for  instance,  take  a  Shake- 
speare, or  a  Newton,  or  a  Goethe,  and  compare  them  with  the 
Britons  and  the  Germans  of  the  time  of  Tacitus.  Do  we  not 
see  an  image  of  progress  there  ?  To  this  argument  there  is 
more  than  one  answer.  It  is  an  argument  that  points  to  some- 
thing, but  does  not  point  to  so  much  as  those  who  use  it  might 
suppose.  No  doubt  a  man  like  Newton  would  be  an  impossibil- 
ity in  an  age  of  barbarism ;  we  may  give  to  civilization  the  whole 
credit  of  producing  him,  and  admit  that  he  is  an  incalculable 
advance  on  the  shrewdest  of  unlettered  savages.  But  though 
we  find  that  civilizations  produce  greater  men  than  barbarism, 
we  do  not  find  that  the  modern  ci\ilizations  produce  greater 
men  than  the  ancient.  Were  they  all  to  meet  in  the  Elysian 
Fields  Newton  would  probably  not  find  Euclid  his  inferior,  nor 
would  Thucydides  show  like  a  dwarf  by  Professor  Freeman. 
Further,  not  only  do  the  limits  of  exceptional  greatness  show 
no  tendency  to  expand,  but  the  existence,  at  any  point,  of 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES   OF   OPTIMISM  185 

exceptionally  great  men  is  no  sure  indication  of  any  answering 
elevation  amongst  the  masses,  any  more  than  the  existence  of 
exceptionally  rich  men  is  a  sure  indication  that  the  masses  are 
not  poor.  The  intellectual  superiority  of  Columbus  to  the 
American  savages  was,  unfortunately,  no  sign  that  his  followers 
were  not  in  many  ways  inferior  to  them. 

What,  then,  is  the  evidence  that  progress,  in  the  sense  of  an 
increasing  happiness  for  an  increasing  number,  is  really  a  con- 
tinuous movement  running  through  all  the  changes  of  history  ? 
It  cannot  be  said  that  there  are  no  facts  which  suggest  such  a 
conclusion,  but  they  are  absurdly  insufficient  in  number,  and 
they  are  balanced  by  others  equally  weighty,  and  of  quite  an 
opposite  character.  Isolated  periods,  isolated  institutions,  do 
indeed  very  strikingly  exhibit  the  movement  in  question.  One 
of  the  most  remarkable  instances  of  it  is  the  development  of 
the  Church  of  Rome,  looked  at  from  the  Catholic  standpoint. 
Again,  we  constantly  find  periods  in  a  nation's  history  during 
which  the  national  happiness  has  demonstrably  moved  onwards. 
Few  of  the  phenomena  on  which  the  faith  in  progress  rests  have 
given  to  that  faith  such  a  violent  stimulus  as  the  rapid  movement 
observable  in  such  periods.  A  case  in  point  is  the  immense  and 
undoubted  improvement  which  during  the  past  forty  years  has 
taken  place  in  the  condition  of  the  working  classes  in  England ; 
and  no  doubt,  in  spite  of  the  ruinous  price  paid  for  it,  France 
purchased  by  the  Revolution  an  improvement  not  dissimilar. 
But  these  movements  are  capable  of  an  interpretation  very 
different  from  that  which  our  sanguine  Optimists  put  on  them. 
They  resemble  a  cure  from  an  exceptional  disease  rather  than 
any  strengthening  of  the  normal  health.  The  French  Revo- 
lution has  been  thought  by  many  to  have  been  a  chopping  up 
of  society  and  a  boiling  of  it  in  Medea's  caldron,  from  whence 
it  should  issue  forth  born  into  a  new  existence.  In  reality  it 
resembled  an  ill-performed  surgical  operation,  which  may  pos- 
sibly have  saved  the  nation's  life,  but  has  shattered  its  nerves  and 
disfigured  it  till  this  day.  Whilst  as  for  ordinary  democratic 
reforms  —  and  this  is  plainest  with  regard  to  those  which  have 


1 86  WILLIAM   HURREL  MALLOCK 

been  most  really  needed  —  their  utmost  effect  has  been  to  cure 
a  temporary  pain,  not  to  add  a  permanent  pleasure.  They 
have  been  pills,  they  have  not  been  elixirs.^ 

The  most  authenticated  cases,  then,  which  we  have  of  any 
genuine  progress  are  to  all  appearance  mere  accidents  and  epi- 
sodes. They  are  not  analogous  to  a  man  progressing,  but  to  a 
tethered  animal  which  has  slipped  getting  up  on  its  legs  again. 
As  to  the  larger  movements  which  form  the  main  features  of 
history,  such  as  the  rise  of  the  Roman  Empire,  these  movements, 
like  waves,  are  always  observed  to  spend  themselves ;  and  it  is 
impossible  to  prove,  without  some  aid  from  theology,  that  the 
new  waves  which  have  shaped  themselves  out  of  the  subsided 
waters,  are  larger,  higher,  or  more  important  than  the  last.  This 
is  true  even  of  the  parts  of  such  movements  as  history  princi- 
pally records ;  but  of  the  part,  which  for  our  modern  Optimists 
is  the  most  important  —  which  is,  indeed,  the  only  important 
part  for  them,  history  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  left  any  gen- 
eral record  at  all.  The  important  part  of  such  movements  is 
their  relation  to  the  happiness  of  the  masses.  Does  any  one 
pretend  that  we  have  any  materials  for  tracing  through  the 
historic  ages  the  fluctuations  in  the  lot  of  the  unnamed  multi- 
tudes ?  Here  and  there  some  riot,  some  servile  war,  or  some 
Jacquerie,  shows  us  that  at  a  certain  period  the  masses  in  some 
special  district  were  miserable,  and  we  can  trace  through  other 
periods  some  legal  amelioration  of  their  lot.  But  taking  the 
historic  periods  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  the  history  of  the  hap- 
piness or  the  misery  of  the  majority  is  a  book  of  which  every- 
thing has  perished  except  some  scattered  fragments,  the  gaps 
between  which  can- only  be  filled  up  by  conjecture,  in  many  cases 
not  even  by  that ;  which  fail  to  suggest  in  any  serious  way  that 

1  The  causes  of  material  or  national  advance  will  be  probably  recognized 
in  time  as  being  mainly,  though  not  entirely,  due  to  the  personal  ambitions 
of  a  gifted  and  vigorous  minority ;  and  the  processes  which  are  now  regarded 
as  signs  of  a  universal  progress  are  constant  cures,  or  attempts  at  cures,  of 
the  evils  or  maladjustments  which  are  at  first  incident  to  any  important 
change. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  187 

the  happiness  of  the  multitudes  concerned  has  followed  any 
intelligible  order,  and  which  certainly  negatives  the  supposition 
that  there  has  been  any  continuous  advance  in  it.  Mr.  Harri- 
son says  that  in  three  thousand  years  progress  should  at  least 
be  appreciable  to  the  naked  eye.  Will  Mr.  Harrison,  or  any  one 
else,  maintain  as  scientifically  demonstrated,  that  the  children 
whipped  to  their  work  in  our  earlier  English  factories  were  hap- 
pier than  the  Egyptian  brickmakers  amongst  the  melons  and 
the  fleshpots  ? 

There  is,  however,  another  hypothesis  possible,  which  may 
give  the  doctrine  of  progress  a  more  scientific  character.  It 
may  be  said  that  though  the  changes  of  history  hitherto  have 
been  seemingly  vague  and  meaningless,  they  have  been  really 
preparatory  for  a  movement  which  is  about  to  begin  now. 
Telegraphs,  ocean  steamers,  express  trains,  and  printing  presses 
have,  it  may  be  admitted,  done  little  for  the  general  happiness 
as  yet;  their  importance  may  have  been  slight  if  we  regard 
them  as  mere  luxuries:  but  all  this  while  they  have  been  knitting 
ibe  races  of  men  together ;  they  have  been  making  the  oneness 
of  Humanity  a  visible  and  accomplished  fact ;  and  very  soon 
we  shall  all  of  us  start  in  company  on  a  march  towards  the 
higher  things  that  the  future  has  in  store  for  us.  What  shall 
we  say  to  some  idea  of  this  sort  —  that  progress  is  a  certainty 
henceforward,  though  it  may  have  been  doubtful  hitherto  ? 
The  idea  is  a  pleasant  one  for  the  fancy  to  dwell  upon,  and  it  is 
easy  to  see  how  it  may  have  been  suggested  by  facts.  But  facts 
certainly  give  us  no  assurance  that  it  is  true ;  they  do  but  suggest 
it,  as  a  cloud  may  suggest  a  whale.  It  is  no  doubt  easier  to 
conceive  the  possibility  of  a  general  onward  movement  in  the 
future  than  it  is  to  conceive  that  of  it  as  a  reality  in  the  past. 
Indeed  no  one  can  demonstrate  that  it  will  not  actually  take 
place.  All  I  wish  to  point  out  is  that  there  is  no  certainty  that 
it  will ;  and  not  only  no  certainty,  but  no  balance  of  probability. 
The  existing  civilization,  which  some  think  so  stable,  and  which 
seems,  as  I  have  said,  to  be  uniting  us  into  one  community, 
contains  in  itself  many  elements  of  decay  or  of  self-destruction. 


1 88  WILLIAM   HURREL   MALLOCK 

In  spite  of  the  way  in  which  the  Western  races  seem  to  have 
covered  the  globe  with  the  network  of  their  power  and  com- 
merce, they  are  outnumbered  at  this  day  in  a  proportion  of  more 
than  two  to  one,  by  the  vast  nations  who  are  utterly  impervious 
to  their  influence  —  impervious  to  their  ideas,  and  indifferent 
to  their  aspirations.  What  scientific  estimate  then  can  be  made 
of  the  influence  of  the  Mohammedan  and  Buddhist  populations, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  others  equally  alien  to  our  civilization,  who 
alone  outnumber  the  entire  brotherhood  of  the  West?  Who 
can  forecast  —  to  take  a  single  instance  —  the  part  which  may 
in  the  future  be  played  by  China  ?  And  again,  who  can  fore- 
cast the  effects  of  overpopulation  ?  And  who  can  fail  to  foresee 
that  they  may  be  far-reaching  and  terrible  ?  How,  in  the  face  of 
disturbing  elements  like  these,  can  the  future  of  progress  be 
anything  more  than  a  guess,  a  hope,  an  opinion,  a  poetic  fancy  ? 
At  all  events,  whatever  it  is,  it  is  certainly  not  science. 

Let  us,  however,  suppose  that  it  is  science.  Let  us  suppose 
that  we  have  full  and  sufficient  evidence  to  convince  us  of  the 
reality  and  continuance  of  a  movement,  slow  indeed  as  its 
exponents  admit  it  to  be,  but  evidently  in  the  direction  of  some 
happy  consummation  in  the  future.  Now  what,  let  us  ask,  will 
this  consummation  be  ?  It  is  put  before  us  by  the  creed  of  Op- 
timism as  the  ultimate  justification  of  all  our  hope  and  enthusi- 
asm, and,  as  Mr.  Morley  says,  of  our  "provisional  acquiescence" 
in  the  existing  sorrows  of  the  world.  Does  any  one,  then,  pro- 
fess to  be  able  to  describe  it  exactly  to  us  ?  To  ask  this  is  no 
idle  question.  Its  importance  can  be  proved  by  reference  to 
Mr.  Harrison  himself.  He  says  that  if  a  consummation  in 
heaven  is  to  have  the  least  real  influence  over  us,  it  is  "not  enough 
to  talk  of  it  in  general  terms."  "  The  all-important  point," 
he  proceeds,  "  is  what  kind  of  heaven  ?  Is  it  a  heaven  of  seraphic 
beatitude  and  unending  hallelujahs  as  imagined  by  Dante  and 
Milton,  or  a  life  of  active  exertion?  And  if  of  active  exertion 
(and  what  can  life  mean  without  exertion?)  of  what  kind  of 
exertion?"  Now  with  regard  to  heaven  it  would  be  perfectly 
easy  to  show  that  this  demand  for  exact  knowledge  is  unreason- 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  189 

able  and  unnecessary ;  for  part  of  the  attraction  of  the  alleged 
beatitude  of  heaven  consists  in  the  belief  that  it  passes  our 
finite  understanding,  that  we  can  only  dimly  augur  it,  and 
that  we  shall  be  changed  before  we  are  admitted  to  it.  But  with 
regard  to  any  blessed  consummation  on  the  earth,  such  details 
as  Mr.  Harrison  asks  for  are  absolutely  indispensable.  Our 
Optimists  tell  us  that,  on  the  expiration  of  a  practical  eternity, 
there  will  be  the  beginnings  at  any  rate  of  a  blessed  and  glorious 
change  in  the  human  lot.  In  Mr.  Harrison's  words,  I  say.  What 
kind  of  a  change  ?  Will  it  be  a  change  tending  to  make  life  a 
round  of  idle  luxury,  or  a  course  of  active  exertion  ?  And  if  of 
active  exertion,  of  what  kind  of  exertion  ?  Will  it  be  practical 
or  speculative?  Will  it  be  discovering  new  stars,  or  making 
new  dyes  out  of  coal  tar  ?     No  one  can  tell  us. 

On  one  point  no  doubt  we  should  find  a  consensus  of  opinion ; 
but  this  point  would  be  negative,  not  positive.  We  should 
be  told  that  poverty,  overwork,  most  forms  of  sickness,  and 
acute  pain  would  be  absent ;  and  surely  it  may  be  said  that  this 
is  a  consummation  fit  to  be  striven  for.  No  doubt  it  is;  but 
from  the  Optimist's  point  of  view,  this  admission  does  abso- 
lutely nothing  to  help  us.  The  problem  is  to  construct  a  life  of 
superlative  happiness ;  and  to  eliminate  physical  suffering  is 
merely  to  place  us  on  the  naked  threshold  of  our  enterprise. 
Suppose  I  see  in  the  street  one  day  some  poor  orphan  girl,  utterly 
desolate,  and  crying  as  if  her  heart  would  break.  That  girl  is 
certainly  not  happy.  Let  us  suppose  I  see  the  same  girl  next 
day,  equally  desolate,  but  distracted  by  an  excruciating  tooth- 
ache. I  could  not  restore  her  parents  to  her,  but  I  can,  we  will 
say,  cure  her  toothache,  and  I  do.  I  ease  her  of  a  terrible  pain. 
I  cause  her  unutterable  relief ;  and  no  doubt  in  doing  so  I  myself 
feel  happy ;  but  as  to  the  orphan  all  I  do  is  this  —  I  restore  her 
to  her  original  misery.  And  so  far  as  the  mere  process  of  stamp- 
ing out  pain  is  concerned,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  it  might 
not  leave  life  in  no  better  position  than  that  of  an  orphan  cured 
of  a  toothache.  Indeed,  if  we  may  trust  the  suggestion  thrown 
out  by  optimistic  writers,  it  would  not,  even  so  far  as  it  went, 


I  go  WILLIAM   HURREL  MALLOCK 

be  an  unmixed  good.  These  writers  have  often  hinted  that  pain 
and  trouble  probably  deepen  our  pleasures ;  so  if  pain  and  trouble 
were  ever  done  away  with,  the  positive  blessings  of  life  might,  on 
their  own  showing,  be  not  heightened  but  degraded. 

Again,  let  us  approach  the  question  from  another  side;  and 
instead  of  regarding  progress  as  an  extinction  of  pain,  let  us 
regard  it  as  the  equitable  distribution  of  material  comforts 
amongst  all.  No  one  would  wish  to  speak  flippantly  —  or  at 
all  events  no  sane  man  can  think  lightly  —  of  the  importance 
of  giving  to  all  a  sufBciency  of  daily  bread.  But  however  we 
realize  that  privation  and  starvation  are  miseries,  it  does  not 
follow  —  indeed  we  know  it  not  to  be  true  —  that  a  light  heart 
goes  with  a  full  stomach.  Or  suppose  us  to  conceive  that  in  the 
future  it  would  come  to  do  so,  and  that  men  would  be  com- 
pletely happy  when  they  all  had  enough  to  eat,  would  this  be  a 
consummation  calculated  to  raise  our  enthusiasm,  or  move  our 
souls  with  a  solemn  zeal  to  work  for  it?  Would  any  human 
being  who  was  ever  capable  of  anything  that  has  ever  been  called 
a  high  conception  of  life,  feel  any  pleasure  in  the  thought  of  a 
Humanity,  "shut  up  in  infinite  content,"  when  once  it  had  se- 
cured itself  three  meals  a  day,  and  smiling  every  morning  a 
satisfied  smile  at  the  universe,  its  huge  lips  shining  with  fried 
eggs  and  bacon  ? 

I  am  not  for  an  instant  saying  that  mere  physical  well-being 
is  the  only  sort  of  happiness  to  which  Optimists  look  forward. 
But  it  is  the  only  sort  of  happiness  about  which  their  ideas  are 
at  all  definite ;  and  I  have  alluded  to  it  as  I  have  done,  merely 
to  point  out  that  their  only  definite  ideas  are  ridiculously  insuffi- 
cient ideas.  I  do  not  doubt  for  a  moment  that  thinkers  like 
Mr.  Harrison  anticipate  for  transfigured  Humanity  pleasures 
which  to  them  seem  nobler  than  the  noblest  we  can  enjoy  now ; 
but  about  these  pleasures  I  say  there  is  no  consensus  of  opinion ; 
what  opinion  there  is,  is  quite  indefinite,  and  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  these  pleasures  will  ever  be  realized,  and  judging 
from  the  hints  we  have  of  them,  there  is  much  to  show  that  they 
would  be  impossible.     To  sum  up  then,  the  altered  Humanity 


THE   SCIENTIFIC   BASES   OF  OPTIMISM  191 

of  the  future,  even  granting  that  we  are  advancing  towards  it, 
may  be  compared  to  an  image  of  which  one  part  only  is  definite. 
It  is  not  Hke  an  image  with  feet  of  clay  and  with  a  head  of  gold, 
but  like  an  image  with  a  stomach  of  clay,  and  everything  else 
of  cloud. 

We  have  now  examined  the  creed  of  Optimism  from  two  points 
of  view,  assuming  in  turn  the  truth  of  each  one  of  its  two  propo- 
sitions, and  inquiring  into  the  truth  of  the  other.  We  first 
assumed  the  reality  of  progress,  and  asked  how  far  our  sympathy 
was  capable  of  being  stimulated  by  it;  we  next  assumed  the 
alleged  capacities  of  our  sympathy,  and  asked  what  grounds 
there  were  for  any  belief  in  a  progress  by  which  sympathy  of  the 
assumed  kind  could  be  roused.  And  we  have  seen  that,  so  far 
as  scientific  evidence  is  concerned,  both  the  propositions  in  ques- 
tion are  unsupported  and  fanciful. 

There  remains  for  us  yet  a  third  test  to  submit  it  to,  and  this 
will  be  found  to  be  the  most  fatal  of  all.  Let  us  assume,  for 
argument's  sake,  that  both  the  propositions  are  true ;  and  we 
shall  see  that  they  contain  in  themselves  elements  by  which 
their  supposed  meaning  is  annihilated.  Let  us  assume,  then, 
that  progress  will,  in  process  of  time,  produce  a  state  of  society 
which  we  should  all  regard  as  satisfactory;  and  let  us  assume 
that  our  sympathies  are  of  such  a  strength  and  delicacy  that  the 
far-off  good  in  store  for  our  remote  descendants  will  be  a  source 
of  real  comfort  to  our  hearts  and  a  real  stimulus  to  our  actions 
—  that  it  will  fill  life,  in  fact,  with  moral  meanings  and  motives. 
It  will  only  require  a  very  little  reflection  to  show  us  that  if 
sympathy  is  really  strong  enough  to  accomplish  this  work,  it 
will  inevitably  be  strong  enough  to  destroy  the  work  which  it 
has  accomplished.  If  we  are,  or  if  we  should  come  to  be,  so 
astonishingly  sensitive  that  the  remote  happiness  of  posterity 
will  cause  us  any  real  pleasure,  the  incalculable  amount  of  pain 
that  will  admittedly  have  preceded  such  happiness,  that  has 
been  suffered  during  the  countless  years  of  the  past,  and  will  have 
to  be  suffered  during  the  countless  intervening  years  of  the 
future,  must  necessarily  convert  such  pleasure  into  agony.     It 


192  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

is  impossible  to  conceive,  unless  we  throw  reality  overboard 
altogether,  and  decamp  frankly  into  dreamland  —  it  is  impos- 
sible to  conceive  our  sympathy  being  made  more  sensitive  to  the 
happiness  of  others,  without  its  being  made  also  more  sensitive 
to  their  misery.  One  might  as  well  suppose  our  powers  of  sight 
increased,  but  increased  only  so  as  to  show  us  agreeable  objects ; 
or  our  powers  of  hearing  increased,  but  increased  only  so  as  to 
convey  to  us  our  own  praises. 

Can  any  one  for  an  instant  doubt  that  this  is  a  fact?  Can 
he  trick  himself  in  any  way  into  any,  even  the  slightest,  evasion 
of  it  ?  Can  he  imagine  himself,  for  instance,  having  a  sudden 
interest  roused  in  him,  from  whatever  cause,  in  the  fortunes  of 
some  young  man,  and  yet  not  feel  a  corresponding  shock  if  the 
young  man  should  chance  to  be  hanged  for  murder  ?  The  idea 
is  ridiculous.  The  truth  of  the  matter  is,  that  unless  our  sym- 
pathies had  a  certain  obtuseness  and  narrowness  in  them,  we 
should  be  too  tender  to  endure  a  day  of  life.  The  rose  leaves 
might  give  a  keener  pleasure ;  but  we  should  be  unable  to  think 
of  it,  because  our  skins  would  be  lacerated  with  thorns.  What 
would  happen  to  us  if,  retaining  the  fastidiousness  of  man,  we 
suddenly  found  that  our  nostrils  were  as  keen  as  those  of  dogs  ? 
We  shoiild  be  sick  every  time  we  walked  through  a  crowded  street. 
Were  our  sympathies  intensified  in  a  similar  way,  we  should 
pass  through  life  not  sick,  but  broken-hearted.  The  whole 
creation  would  seem  to  be  groaning  and  travailing  together; 
and  the  laughter  and  rejoicing  of  posterity  would  be  drowned  by 
the  intervening  sounds,  or  else  would  seem  a  ghastly  mockery. 

But  suppose  —  we  have  been  waiving  objections,  and  we 
will  now  waive  them  again  —  suppose  that  the  intervening  pain 
does  somehow  not  inconvenience  us ;  and  that  our  sympathies, 
"on  this  bank  and  shoal  of  time,  jump  it,"  and  bring  us  safely 
to  the  joy  and  prosperity  beyond.  Now  this  jump,  on  Mr. 
Harrison's  own  showing,  will  carry  us  across  an  eternity.  It 
will  annihilate  the  distance  between  our  own  imperfect  condi- 
tion and  our  posterity's  perfect  condition.  But  how'  does 
Mr.  Harrison  imagine  that  it  will  stop  there  ?    He  admits  that 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  193 

all  human  existence  will  come  to  an  end  some  day,  but  the  end. 
he  thinks,  does  not  matter  because  it  is  so  far  off.  But  if  sym- 
pathy acquires  this  power  of  jumping  across  eternities,  the  end 
ceases  to  be  far  off  any  longer.  The  same  power  that  takes  us 
from  the  beginnings  of  progress  to  the  consummation  of  progress 
will  take  us  from  the  consummation  of  progress  to  its  horrible 
and  sure  destruction  —  to  its  death  by  inches,  as  the  icy  period 
comes,  turning  the  whole  earth  into  a  torture  chamber,  and 
effacing  forever  the  happiness  and  the  triumph  of  man  in  a 
hideous  and  meaningless  end.  Knowing  that  the  drama  is 
thus  really  a  tragedy,  how  shall  we  be  able  to  pretend  to  our- 
selves that  it  is  a  divine  comedy?  It  is  true  that  death  waits 
for  all  and  each  of  us ;  and  yet  we  continue  to  eat,  drink,  and 
be  merry :  but  that  is  precisely  because  our  sympathies  have  not 
those  powers  which  Mr.  Harrison  asserts  they  have,  because 
instead  of  connecting  us  with  what  will  happen  to  others  in 
three  thousand  years,  it  connects  us  only  slightly  with  what  will 
happen  to  ourselves  in  thirty. 

We  thus  see  that  the  creed  of  Optimism  is  composed  of  ideas 
that  do  not  even  agree  with  each  other.  They  might  do  that, 
however,  and  yet  be  entirely  false.  The  great  question  is,  do 
they  agree  with  facts  ?  and  not  only  that,  but  are  they  forced 
on  us  by  facts  ?  Do  facts  leave  us  no  room  for  rationally  con- 
tradicting or  doubting  them  ?  In  a  word,  have  they  any  basis 
even  approximately  similar  to  what  would  be  required  to  sup- 
port a  theory  of  light,  or  heat,  or  electricity,  of  the  geologic 
history  of  the  earth,  or  of  the  evolution  of  species  ?  Is  the  evi- 
dence for  their  truth  as  overwhelming  and  as  unanimous  as  the 
evidence  Professor  Huxley  would  require  to  make  him  believe 
in  a  miracle  ?  Or  have  they  ever  been  submitted  to  the  same 
eager  and  searching  skepticism  which  has  sought  for  and  weighed 
every  fact,  sentence,  and  syllable  that  might  tend  to  make  in- 
credible our  traditional  conception  of  the  Bible?  They  cer- 
tainly have  not.  The  treatment  they  have  met  with  has  been 
not  only  not  this,  but  the  precise  opposite.  Men  who  claim 
to  have  destroyed  Christianity  in  the  name  of  science  justify 


104  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

their  belief  in  Optimism  by  every  method  that  their  science 
stigmatizes  as  most  immoral.  Mr.  Harrison  admits,  with  rela- 
tion to  Christianity,  that  the  Redemption  became  incredible 
with  the  destruction  of  the  geocentric  theory,  because  the  world 
became  a  speck  in  the  universe,  infinitely  too  little  for  so  vast 
a  drama.  But  when  he  comes  to  defending  his  own  religion  of 
Optimism  he  says,  "the  infinite  littleness  of 'the  world"  is  a 
thought  we  "will  put  away  from  us"  as  an  "unmanly  and 
unhealthy  musing."  Similarly  Mr.  John  Morley,  who  admits 
with  great  candor  that  many  facts  exist  which  suggest  doubts 
of  progress,  instead  of  examining  these  doubts  and  giving  their 
full  weight  to  them,  tells  us  that  we  ought  to  set  them  aside  as 
"unworthy."  Was  ever  such  language  heard  in  the  mouths  of 
scientific  men  about  any  of  those  subjects  which  have  formed 
their  proper  studies  ?  It  is  rather  a  parody  of  the  language  of 
such  men  as  Mr.  Keble,  who  declared  that  religious  skeptics 
were  too  wicked  to  be  reasoned  with,  and  who  incurred,  for  this 
reason  more  than  any  other,  the  indignant  scorn  of  all  our 
scientific  critics.  Which  of  such  critics  was  ever  heard  to  defend 
a  theory  of  the  authorship  of  Job  or  of  the  Pentateuch  by  declar- 
ing that  any  doubts  of  their  doubts  were  "unmanly,"  or  "un- 
healthy"? Who  would  answer  an  attack  on  the  Darwinian 
theory  of  coral  reefs  by  calling  it  "  unworthy  "  ?  or  meet  admitted 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  a  theory  of  light  by  following  Mr.  Har- 
rison's example,  and  saying,  "we  will  put  them  aside"  ? 

Let  the  reader  consider  another  statement  expHcitly  made 
by  Mr.  John  Morley  relative  to  this  very  question  of  Optimism. 
He  quotes  the  following  passage  from  Diderot:  "Does  the 
narrative  present  me  with  some  fact  that  dishonors  human- 
ity? Then  I  examine  it  with  the  most  rigorous  severity. 
Whatever  sagacity  I  may  be  able  to  command  I  employ  in  detect- 
ing contradictions  that  throw  suspicion  on  the  story.  It  is 
not  so  when  the  action  is  beautiful,  lofty,  noble."  "Diderot's 
way,''^  says  Mr.  Morley,  "0/  reading  history  is  not  unworthy  oj 
imitation.'^  Is  it  necessary  to  quote  more?  This  astonishing 
sentence  —  not  astonishing  for  the  fact  it  admits,  but  for  the 


THE  SCIENTIFIC  BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  195 

naive  candor  of  the  admission  —  describes  in  a  nutshell  the 
method  which  men  of  science,  who  have  attacked  Christianity 
in  the  name  of  the  divine  duty  of  skepticism,  and  of  a  conscience 
which  forbids  them  to  believe  anything  not  fully  proved  —  this 
sentence  describes  the  method  which  such  men  consider  scientific 
when  establishing  a  religion  of  their  own.  Let  us  swallow  what- 
ever suits  us ;  whatever  goes  against  us  let  us  examine  with  the 
most  rigorous  severity. 

No  feature  in  the  history  of  modern  thought  is  more  instruct- 
ive than  the  contrast  I  have  just  indicated  —  the  contrast 
between  the  skepticism,  and  the  exactingness  of  science,  in  its 
attack  on  Christianity,  and  its  abject  credulity  in  constructing 
a  futile  substitute.  That  there  is  no  universal,  no  continuous 
meaning  in  the  changes  of  human  history,  that  progress  of  some 
sort  may  not  be  a  reaHty,  I  am  not  for  a  moment  arguing.  All 
I  have  urged  hitherto  is,  that  there  is  no  evidence,  such  as  would 
be  accepted  either  in  physical  or  philosophical  science,  to  prove 
there  is.  The  facts,  no  doubt,  suggest  any  number  of  meanings, 
but  they  support  none ;  and  if  Professor  Huxley  is  right  in  saying 
that  it  is  very  immoral  in  us  to  believe  in  such  doubtful  books 
as  the  Gospels,  it  must  be  far  more  immoral  in  him  to  believe 
in  the  meaning  of  human  existence.  What  the  spectacle  of 
the  world's  history  would  really  suggest  to  an  impartial  scientific 
observer,  who  had  no  religion  and  who  had  not  contracted  to 
construct  one,  is  a  conclusion  eminently  in  harmony  with  the 
drift  of  scientific  speculation  generally.  The  doctrines  of  nat- 
ural selection  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest,  imply  on  the  part 
of  nature  a  vast  number  of  failures  —  failures  complete  or  partial. 
The  same  idea  may  be  applicable  to  worlds,  as  to  species  in  this 
world.  If  we  conceive,  as  we  have  every  warrant  for  conceiving, 
an  incalculable  number  of  inhabited  planets,  the  history  of  their 
crowning  races  will,  according  to  all  analogy,  be  various.  Some 
will  arrive  at  great  and  general  happiness,  some  at  happiness 
partial  and  less  complete,  some  may  very  likely,  as  long  as  their 
inhabitants  last,  be  hells  of  struggle  and  wretchedness.  Now 
what  to  an  impartial  observer  the  history  of  the  earth  would 


196  WILLIAM  HURREL  MALLOCK 

suggest,  would  be  that  it  occupied  some  intermediate  position 
between  the  completest  successes  and  the  absolutely  horrible 
failures  —  a  position  probably  at  the  lower  end  of  the  scale, 
though  many  degrees  above  the  bottom  of  it.  Considered  in 
this  light  its  history  becomes  intelligible,  because  we  cease 
to  treat  as  hieroglyphs  full  of  meaning  a  series  of  marks  which 
have  really  no  meaning  at  all.  We  shall  see  constant  attempts 
at  progress,  we  shall  see  progress  realized  in  certain  places  up  to 
a  certain  point ;  but  we  shall  see  that  after  a  certain  point,  the 
castle  of  cards  or  sand  falls  to  pieces  again ;  and  that  others 
attempt  to  rise,  perhaps  even  less  successfully.  We  still  see 
numberless  words  shaping  themselves,  but  never  any  complete 
sentence.  Taken  as  a  whole,  we  shall  be  reminded  of  certain 
lines,  which  I  have  already  alluded  to,  referring  to  an  "idiot's 
tale."  The  destinies  of  humanity  need  not  be  all  sound  and 
fury ;  but  certainly  regarding  them  as  a  whole,  we  shall  have 
to  say  of  them,  that  they  are  a  tale  without  plot,  without  coher- 
ence, without  interest  —  in  a  word,  that  they  signify  nothing. 

I  do  not  say  for  a  moment  that  this  is  the  truth  about  Human- 
ity ;  but  that  this  is  the  kind  of  conclusion  which  we  should  prob- 
ably arrive  at  if  we  trusted  to  purely  scientific  observation,  with 
no  preconceived  idea  that  life  must  have  a  meaning,  and  no  in- 
terest in  giving  it  one.  No  dolibt  such  a  view,  if  true,  would  be 
completely  fatal  to  everything  which  to  men,  in  what  hitherto 
we  have  called  their  higher  moments,  has  made  life  dignified,  se- 
rious, or  even  tolerable.  Hitherto  in  those  higher  moments  they 
have  risen,  like  the  philosophers  out  of  Plato's  cavern,  from  their 
narrow  selfish  interests,  into  the  light  of  a  larger  outlook,  and 
seen  that  life  is  full  of  august  meanings.  But  that  light  has  not 
been  the  light  of  science.  Science  will  give  men  a  larger  outlook 
also ;  but  it  will  raise  them  above  their  narrower  interests,  not  to 
show  them  wider  ones,  but  to  show  them  none  at  all.  If  then 
the  light  that  is  in  us  is  darkness,  we  may  well  say,  how  great  is 
that  darkness  !  It  is  from  this  darkness  that  religion  comes  to 
deliver  us,  not  by  destroying  what  science  has  taught  us,  but  by 
adding  to  it  something  that  it  has  not  taught  us. 


THE   SCIENTIFIC  BASES  OF  OPTIMISM  197 

Whether  we  can  believe  in  this  added  something  or  not  is  a 
point  I  have  in  no  way  argued.  I  have  not  sought  to  prove  that 
life  has  no  meaning,  but  merely  that  it  has  none  discoverable  by 
the  methods  of  modern  science.  I  will  not  even  say  that  men  of 
science  themselves  are  not  certain  of  its  existence,  and  may  not 
live  by  this  certainty;  but  only  that,  if  so,  they  are  unaware 
whence  this  certainty  comes,  and  that  though  their  inner  con- 
victions may  claim  our  most  sincere  respect,  their  own  analysis 
of  them  deserves  our  most  contemptuous  ridicule. 

If  there  is  a  soul  in  man,  and  if  there  is  a  God  who  has  given  this 
soul,  the  instinct  of  religion  can  never  die ;  but  if  there  is  any 
authentic  explanation  of  the  relations  between  the  soul  and  God, 
and  for  some  reason  or  other  men  in  any  way  cease  to  accept  this, 
their  own  explanations  may  well,  by  a  gradual  process,  resolve 
themselves  into  a  denial  of  the  theory  they  seek  to  explain.  And 
such,  according  to  our  men  of  science  themselves,  has  been  the 
case  with  the  orthodox  Christian  faith,  when  once  it  began  to  be 
disintegrated  by  the  solvent  of  Protestantism.  The  process  is 
forcibly  alluded  to  by  Mr.  Harrison.  Traditional  Protestantism 
dissolved  into  the  nebulous  tenets  of  the  Broad  Churchmen ;  the 
tenets  of  the  Broad  Churchmen  dissolved  into  Deism,  Deism 
into  Pantheism  and  the  cultus  of  the  Unknowable,  and  the  last 
into  Optimism.  Mr.  Harrison  fails  to  read  the  lesson  of  history 
further,  and  to  see  that  Optimism  in  its  turn  must  yield  to  the 
solvent  of  criticism,  and  leave  the  religious  instinct,  or  what  is 
the  same  thing,  a  sense  of  a  meaning  in  Hfe,  as  a  forlorn  and 
bewildered  emotion  without  any  explanation  of  itself  at  all. 
What  Optimism  is  at  present  must  be  abundantly  evident.  It  is 
the  last  attempt  to  discover  a  peg  on  which  to  hang  the  fallen 
clothes  of  Christianity.  As  Mr.  Harrison  tells  us,  most  of  our 
scientific  Optimists  have  been  brought  up  with  all  the  emotions 
of  that  faith.  They  have  got  rid  of  the  faith,  but  the  emotions 
have  been  left  on  their  hands.  They  long  for  some  object  on 
which  to  lavish  them,  just  as  Don  Quixote  longed  to  find  a  lady- 
love ;  and  if  we  may  judge  from  certain  phrases  of  Mr.  Harrison, 
they  have  modestly  contented  themselves  with  asking  not  that 


198  WILLIAJNI   HURREL  ]\L\LLOCK 

the  object  should  be  a  truth,  but  merely  that  it  should  not,  on 
the  face  of  it,  be  a  falsehood.  He  does  not  ask  how  well  Human- 
ity deserves  to  be  thought  of,  but  how  well  he  and  his  friends  will 
be  able  to  think  of  it.  Once  more  let  us  say  that  this  emotion 
which  they  call  the  love  of  Humanity  is  not  an  emotion  I  would 
ridicule.  I  only  ridicule  their  bestowal  of  it.  The  love  of  Hu- 
manity, with  no  faith  to  enlighten  it,  and  nothing  to  justify  it 
beyond  what  science  can  show,  is  as  absurd  as  the  love  of  Titania 
la\ished  on  Bottom;  and  the  high  priests  of  Humanity,  with 
their  solemn  and  pompous  gravity,  are  like  nothing  so  much  as 
the  Bumbles  of  a  squabbling  parish.  We  all  know  what  Hobbes 
said  to  Catholicism,  that  it  was  the  ghost  of  the  dead  Roman  Em- 
pire, sitting  enthroned  on  the  ashes  of  it.  Optimism,  in  the  same 
way,  is  the  ghost  of  Protestantism  sitting  on  its  ashes,  not  en- 
throned but  gibbering. 

I  hope  that  before  long  I  may  again  return  to  this  subject,  to 
touch  on  many  points  which  I  have  been  unable  to  glance  at  now. 
On  former  occasions  I  have  been  asked  by  certain  critics  what  pos- 
sible use,  even  suppose  life  is  not  worth  much,  I  could  hope  to  find 
in  kying  the  fact  bare.  To  the  Optimists  as  men  of  science  no 
explanation  is  needed.  Ever>'  attempt  to  establish  any  truth, 
or  e\'en  to  establish  any  doubt,  according  to  their  principles  is  not 
only  justifiable,  but  is  a  duty.  To  others,  an  explanation  will 
not  be  very  far  to  seek.  If  there  is  a  meaning  in  life,  we  shall 
never  understand  it  rightly  till  we  have  ceased  to  amuse  our- 
selves with  understanding  it  wrongly.  Humanity,  if  there  is 
an\'  sah'ation  for  it,  will  never  be  saved  till  it  sees  that  it  cannot 
save  itself,  and  asks  in  humility,  seeking  some  greater  power, 
Who  shall  deUver  me  from  the  body  of  this  death  ?  But  as 
matters  stand,  it  will  never  see  this  or  ask  this,  till  it  has  seen 
face  to  face  the  whole  of  its  ghastly  helplessness,  and  tasted  — 
at  least  intellectually  —  the  dregs  of  its  degradation.  When  we 
have  filled  our  bellies  with  the  husks  that  swine  eat,  it  may  be 
that  we  shall  arise  and  go. 


VIII 

DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES 

Thomas  Henry  Huxley 

[The  present  essay  by  Huxley,  published  in  the  Westminster  Review  in 
April,  i860,  was  one  of  the  earliest  reviews  of  Darwin's  epoch-making  work, 
The  Origin  of  Species.  Darwin's  book  is  so  stupendous  an  accumulation  of 
scientific  data  that  it  needed  at  the  time,  and  needs  now  for  the  casual  stu- 
dent, an  interpreter.  Huxley  fulfilled  this  function  with  great  success  for 
many  years.  This  article,  in  fact,  is  only  one  of  a  large  number  of  essays  and 
addresses  by  Huxley  which  present  the  substance  of  Darwin's  investigations 
in  a  popular,  readily  comprehensible  light.  Huxley's  opposition  to  the  advo- 
cates of  the  theory  of  special  creation,  who  represented  then  in  the  main  the 
conservative  religious  element,  may  seem  unnecessarily  harsh ;  but  it  must 
be  remembered  that  in  that  day  the  "battle-ground  of  religion  and  science" 
was  emphatically  real.  Dogmatic  churchmen  of  Huxley's  time  conceived 
science  as  nursing  an  antagonism  that  could  be  appeased  only  by  the  utter 
destruction  of  religious  sentiment.  That  Huxley  was  mistakenly  held  to  be 
an  arch  enemy  of  religion  may  be  seen  in  his  numerous  temperate  and  open- 
minded  writings  on  the  relations  of  scientific  and  spiritual  beliefs. 

This  essay  is  a  competent  discussion  of  the  principal  points  of  the  Dar- 
winian theory,  although  these  points  are  presented  with  Huxley's  character- 
istic caution.  The  fact  is  here  emphasized  that  Darwin's  hypothesis,  like  all 
hypotheses,  can  be  accepted  only  tentatively,  until  supported  by  a  convinc- 
ing mass  of  corroborative  evidence.  The  scientific  attitude  of  our  day, 
however,  holds,  as  Professor  E.  B.  Wilson  expresses  it,  that  "biological  in- 
vestigators have  long  since  ceased  to  regard  the  fact  of  organic  evolution  as 
open  to  serious  discussion."] 

Mr.  Darwin's  long-standing  and  well-earned  scientific  emi- 
nence probably  renders  him  indifferent  to  that  social  notoriety 
wliich  passes  by  the  name  of  success ;  but  if  the  calm  spirit  of  the 
philosopher  have  not  yet  wholly  superseded  the  ambition  and 
the  vanity  of  the  carnal  man  within  him,  he  must  be  well  satis- 
fied with  the  results  of  his  venture  in  publishing  the  Origin  oj 

199 


200  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

Species.  Overflowing  the  narrow  bounds  of  purely  scientific 
circles,  the  "species  question"  divides  with  Italy  and  the  Volun- 
teers the  attention  of  general  society.  Everybody  has  read  Mr. 
Darwin's  book,  or,  at  least,  has  given  an  opinion  upon  its  merits 
or  demerits ;  pietists,  whether  lay  or  ecclesiastic,  decry  it  with 
the  mild  railing  which  sounds  so  charitable ;  bigots  denounce  it 
with  ignorant  invective ;  old  ladies,  of  both  sexes,  consider  it  a 
decidedly  dangerous  book,  and  even  savants,  who  have  no  better 
mud  to  throw,  quote  antiquated  writers  to  show  that  its  author 
is  no  better  than  an  ape  himself;  while  every  philosophical 
thinker  hails  it  as  a  veritable  Whitworth  gun  in  the  armory  of 
liberalism;  and  all  competent  naturaUsts  and  physiologists,  what- 
ever their  opinions  as  to  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  doctrines  put 
forth,  acknowledge  that  the  work  in  which  they  are  embodied  is 
a  solid  contribution  to  knowledge  and  inaugurates  a  new  epoch 
in  natural  history. 

Nor  has  the  discussion  of  the  subject  been  restrained  within 
the  limits  of  conversation.  When  the  public  is  eager  and  inter- 
ested, reviewers  must  ininister  to  its  wants ;  and  the  genuine 
litterateur  is  too  much  in  the  habit  of  acquiring  his  knowledge 
from  the  book  he  judges  —  as  the  Abyssinian  is  said  to  provide 
himself  with  steaks  from  the  ox  which  carries  him  —  to  be  with- 
held from  criticism  of  a  profound  scientific  work  by  the  mere 
want  of  the  requisite  preliminary  scientific  acquirement ;  while, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  men  of  science  who  wish  well  to  the  new 
views,  no  less  than  those  who  dispute  their  validity,  have  natu- 
rally sought  opportunities  of  expressing  their  opinions.  Hence  it 
is  not  surprising  that  almost  all  the  critical  journals  have  noticed 
Mr.  Darwin's  work  at  greater  or  less  length;  and  so  many  dis- 
quisitions, of  every  degree  of  excellence,  from  the  poor  product  of 
ignorance,  too  often  stimulated  by  prejudice,  to  the  fair  and 
thoughtful  essay  of  the  candid  student  of  nature,  have  appeared, 
that  it  seems  an  almost  hopeless  task  to  attempt  to  say  anything 
new  upon  the  question. 

But  it  may  be  doubted  if  the  knowledge  and  acumen  of  pre- 
judged scientific  opponents,  or  the  subtlety  of  orthodox  special 


DARWIN  ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  201 

pleaders,  have  yet  exerted  their  full  force  in  mystifying  the  real 
issues  of  the  great  controversy  which  has  been  set  afoot,  and 
whose  end  is  hardly  likely  to  be  seen  by  this  generation ;  so  that 
at  this  eleventh  hour,  and  even  failing  anything  new,  it  may  be 
useful  to  state  afresh  that  which  is  true,  and  to  put  the  fundamen- 
tal positions  advocated  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  such  a  form  that  they 
may  be  grasped  by  those  whose  special  studies  lie  in  other  direc- 
tions. And  the  adoption  of  this  course  may  be  the  more  ad- 
visable, because  notwithstanding  its  great  deserts,  and  indeed 
partly  on  account  of  them,  the  Origin  of  Species  is  by  no  means 
an  easy  book  to  read  —  if  by  reading  is  implied  the  full  compre- 
hension of  an  author's  meaning. 

We  do  not  speak  jestingly  in  saying  that  it  is  Mr.  Darwin's 
misfortune  to  know  more  about  the  question  he  has  taken  up 
than  any  man  living.  Personally  and  practically  exercised  in 
zoology,  in  minute  anatomy,  in  geology ;  a  student  of  geographi- 
cal distribution,  not  on  maps  and  in  museums  only,  but  by  long 
voyages  and  laborious  collection  ;  having  largely  advanced  each 
of  these  branches  of  science,  and  having  spent  many  years  in 
gathering  and  sifting  materials  for  his  present  work,  the  store  of 
accurately  registered  facts  upon  which  the  author  of  the  Origin 
of  Species  is  able  to  draw  at  will  is  prodigious. 

But  this  very  superabundance  of  matter  must  have  been  em- 
barrassing to  a  writer  who,  for  the  present,  can  only  put  forward 
an  abstract  of  his  views;  and  thence  it  arises,  perhaps,  that  not- 
withstanding the  clearness  of  the  style,  those  who  attempt  fairly 
to  digest  the  book  find  much  of  it  a  sort  of  intellectual  pemmican 
—  a  mass  of  facts  crushed  and  pounded  into  shape,  rather  than 
held  together  by  the  ordinary  medium  of  an  obvious  logical 
bond :  due  attention  will,  without  doubt,  discover  this  bond,  but 
it  is  often  hard  to  find. 

Again,  from  sheer  want  of  room,  much  has  to  be  taken  for 
granted  which  might  readily  enough  be  proved;  and  hence,  while 
the  adept,  who  can  supply  the  missing  hnks  in  the  evidence  from 
his  own  knowledge,  discovers  fresh  proof  of  the  singular  thor- 
oughness with  which  all  difficulties  have  been  considered  and  all 


202  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

unjustifiable  suppositions  avoided,  at  every  reperusal  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  pregnant  paragraphs,  the  novice  in  biology  is  apt  to 
complain  of  the  frequency  of  what  he  fancies  is  gratuitous 
assumption. 

Thus  while  it  may  be  doubted  if,  for  some  years,  any  one  is 
likely  to  be  competent  to  pronounce  judgment  on  all  the  issues 
raised  by  Mr.  Darwin,  there  is  assuredly  abundant  room  for  him, 
who,  assuming  the  humbler,  though  perhaps  as  useful,  office  of  an 
interpreter  between  the  Origin  of  Species  and  the  public,  con- 
tents himself  with  endeavoring  to  point  out  the  nature  of  the 
problems  which  it  discusses ;  to  distinguish  between  the  ascer- 
tained facts  and  the  theoretical  views  which  it  contains;  and 
finally,  to  show  the  extent  to  which  the  explanation  it  offers  satis- 
fies the  requirements  of  scientific  logic.  At  any  rate,  it  is  this 
office  which  we  purpose  to  undertake  in  the  following  pages. 

It  may  be  safely  assumed  that  our  readers  have  a  general  con- 
ception of  the  nature  of  the  objects  to  which  the  word  "species" 
is  applied ;  but  it  has,  perhaps,  occurred  to  a  few,  even  to  those 
who  are  naturalists  ex  professo,  to  reflect  that,  as  commonly  em- 
ployed, the  term  has  a  double  sense  and  denotes  two  very  differ- 
ent orders  of  relations.  When  we  call  a  group  of  animals,  or 
of  plants,  a  species,  we  may  imply  thereby  either  that  all  these 
animals  or  plants  have  some  common  peculiarity  of  form  or  struc- 
ture; or  we  may  mean  that  they  possess  some  common  func- 
tional character.  That  part  of  biological  science  which  deals 
with  form  and  structure  is  called  ,  Morphology  —  that  which 
concerns  itself  with  function.  Physiology  —  so  that  we  may  con- 
veniently speak  of  these  two  senses  or  aspects  of  "  species  "  —  the 
one  as  morphological,  the  other  as  physiological.  Regarded 
from  the  former  point  of  view,  a  species  is  nothing  more  than  a 
kind  of  animal  or  plant,  which  is  distinctly  definable  from  all 
others  by  certain  constant  and  not  merely  sexual,  morphological 
peculiarities.  Thus  horses  form  a  species,  because  the  group  of 
animals  to  which  that  name  is  applied  is  distinguished  from  all 
others  in  the  world  by  the  following  constantly  associated 
characters.     They  have  (i)  A  vertebral  column;  (2)  Mammae; 


DARWIN  ON  THE   ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES  203 

(3)  A  placental  embryo  ;  (4)  Four  legs ;  (5)  A  single  well-devel- 
oped toe  in  each  foot  provided  with  a  hoof ;  (6)  A  bushy  tail ;  and 
(7)  Callosities  on  the  inner  sides  of  both  the  fore  and  the  hind 
legs.  The  asses,  again,  form  a  distinct  species,  because,  with  the 
same  characters,  as  far  as  the  fifth  in  the  above  list,  all  asses  have 
tufted  tails,  and  have  callosities  only  on  the  inner  side  of  the  fore 
legs.  If  animals  were  discovered  having  the  general  characters 
of  the  horse,  but  sometimes  with  callosities  only  on  the  fore  legs, 
and  more  or  less  tufted  tails ;  or  animals  having  the  general 
characters  of  the  ass,  but  with  more  or  less  bushy  tails,  and  some- 
times with  callosities  on  both  pairs  of  legs,  besides  being  inter- 
mediate in  other  respects  —  the  two  species  would  have  to  be 
merged  into  one.  They  could  no  longer  be  regarded  as  mor- 
phologically distinct  species,  for  they  would  not  be  distinctly 
definable  one  from  the  other. 

However  bare  and  simple  this  definition  of  species  may  appear 
to  be,  we  confidently  appeal  to  all  practical  naturalists,  whether 
zoologists,  botanists,  or  paleontologists,  to  say  if,  in  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  they  know,  or  mean  to  affirm,  anything  more 
of  the  group  of  animals  or  plants  they  so  denominate  than  what 
has  just  been  stated.  Even  the  most  decided  advocates  of  the 
received  doctrines  respecting  species  admit  this. 

"I  apprehend,"  says  Professor  Owen,^  "that  few  naturalists 
nowadays,  in  describing  and  proposing  a  name  for  what  they 
call  'a  new  species,'  use  that  term  to  signify  what  was  meant  by 
it  twenty'  or  thirty  years  ago  ;  that  is,  an  originally  distinct  crea- 
tion, maintaining  its  primitive  distinction  by  obstructive  genera- 
tive peculiarities.  The  proposer  of  the  new  species  now  intends 
to  state  no  more  than  he  actually  knows ;  as  for  example,  that 
the  differences  on  which  he  founds  the  specific  character  are  con- 
stant in  individuals  of  both  sexes,  so  far  as  observation  has 
reached ;  and  that  they  are  not  due  to  domestication  or  to  arti- 
ficially superinduced  external  circumstances,  or  to  any  outward 

1  "On  the  Osteology  of  the  Chimpanzees  and  Orangs,"  Transactions  of  the 
Zoological  Society,  1858. 


204  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

influence  within  his  cognizance;  that  the  species  is  wild,  or  is 
such  as  it  appears  by  nature." 

If  we  consider,  in  fact,  that  by  far  the  largest  proportion  of  re- 
corded existing  species  are  known  only  by  the  study  of  their  skins, 
or  bones,  or  other  lifeless  exuvia ;  that  we  are  acquainted  with 
none,  or  next  to  none,  of  their  physiological  pecuharities  be- 
yond those  which  can  be  deduced  from  their  structure,  or  are 
open  to  cursory  observation ;  and  that  we  cannot  hope  to  learn 
more  of  any  of  those  extinct  forms  of  life  which  now  constitute  no 
inconsiderable  proportion  of  the  known  Flora  and  Fauna  of  the 
world ;  it  is  obvious  that  the  definitions  of  these  species  can  be  only 
of  a  purely  structural  or  morphological  character.  It  is  probable 
that  naturalists  would  have  avoided  much  confusion  of  ideas  if 
they  had  more  frequently  borne  these  necessary  limitations  of 
our  knowledge  in  mind.  But  while  it  may  safely  be  admitted 
that  we  are  acquainted  with  only  the  morphological  characters 
of  the  vast  majority  of  species,  the  functional  or  physiological 
peculiarities  of  a  few  have  been  carefully  investigated,  and  the 
result  of  that  study  forms  a  large  and  most  interesting  portion  of 
the  physiology  of  reproduction. 

The  student  of  nature  wonders  the  more  and  is  astonished  the 
less,  the  more  conversant  he  becomes  with  her  operations ;  but 
of  all  the  perennial  miracles  she  offers  to  his  inspection,  perhaps 
the  most  worthy  of  admiration  is  the  development  of  a  plant  or  of 
an  animal  from  its  embryo.  Examine  the  recently  laid  egg  of 
some  common  animal,  such  as  a  salamander  or  a  newt.  It  is  a 
minute  spheroid  in  which  the  best  microscope  will  reveal  nothing 
but  a  structureless  sac,  inclosing  a  glairy  fluid,  holding  granules 
in  suspension.  But  strange  possibilities  lie  dormant  in  that  semi- 
fluid globule.  Let  a  moderate  supply  of  warmth  reach  its  watery 
cradle,  and  the  plastic  matter  undergoes  changes  so  rapid  and 
yet  so  steady  and  purpose-like  in  their  succession,  that  one 
can  only  compare  them  to  those  operated  by  a  skilled  modeler 
upon  a  formless  lump  of  clay.  As  with  an  invisible  trowel,  the 
mass  is  divided  and  subdivided  into  smaller  and  smaller  portions, 


DARWIN  ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  205 

until  it  is  reduced  to  an  aggregation  of  granules  not  too  large  to 
build  withal  the  finest  fabrics  of  the  nascent  organism.  And, 
then,  it  is  as  if  a  delicate  finger  traced  out  the  line  to  be  occupied 
by  the  spinal  column,  and  molded  the  contour  of  the  body; 
pinching  up  the  head  at  one  end,  the  tail  at  the  other,  and  fash- 
ioning flank  and  limb  into  due  salamandrine  proportions,  in  so 
artistic  a  way,  that,  after  watching  the  process  hour  by  hour,  one 
is  almost  involuntarily  possessed  by  the  notion  that  some  more 
subtle  aid  to  vision  than  an  achromatic  would  show  the  hidden 
artist,  with  his  plan  before  him,  striving  with  skillful  manipula- 
tion to  perfect  his  work. 

As  life  advances,  and  the  young  amphibian  ranges  the  waters, 
the  terror  of  his  insect  contemporaries,  not  only  are  the  nutri- 
tious particles  supplied  by  its  prey,  by  the  addition  of  which  to 
its  frame  growth  takes  place,  laid  down,  each  in  its  proper  spot, 
and  in  such  due  proportion  to  the  rest,  as  to  reproduce  the  form, 
the  color,  and  the  size,  characteristic  of  the  parental  stock ;  but 
even  the  wonderful  powers  of  reproducing  lost  parts  possessed  by 
these  animals  are  controlled  by  the  same  governing  tendency. 
Cut  off  the  legs,  the  tail,  the  jaws,  separately  or  all  together,  and, 
as  Spallanzani  showed  long  ago,  these  parts  not  only  grow  again, 
but  the  redintegrated  limb  is  formed  on  the  same  type  as  those 
which  were  lost.  The  new  jaw  or  leg  is  a  newt's,  and  never  by 
any  accident  more  like  that  of  a  frog.  What  is  true  of  the  newt  is 
true  of  every  animal  and  of  every  plant ;  the  acorn  tends  to  build 
itself  up  again  into  a  woodland  giant  such  as  that  from  whose 
twig  it  fell ;  the  spore  of  the  humblest  lichen  reproduces  the  green 
or  brown  incrustation  which  gave  it  birth ;  and  at  the  other  end  of 
the  scale  of  life,  the  child  that  resembles  neither  the  paternal  nor  the 
maternal  side  of  the  house  would  be  regarded  as  a  kind  of  monster. 

So  that  the  one  end  to  which  in  all  living  beings  the  formative 
impulse  is  tending  —  the  one  scheme  which  the  Archaeus  of  the 
old  speculators  strives  to  carry  out  —  seems  to  be  to  mold  the 
offspring  into  the  likeness  of  the  parent.  It  is  the  first  great  law 
of  reproduction,  that  the  offspring  tends  to  resemble  its  parent 
or  parents,  more  closely  than  anything  else. 


2o6  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

Science  will  some  day  show  us  how  this  law  is  a  necessary  con- 
sequence of  the  more  general  laws  which  govern  matter ;  but  for 
the  present,  more  can  hardly  be  said  than  that  it  appears  to  be 
in  harmony  with  them.  We  know  that  the  phenomena  of  vitality 
are  not  something  apart  from  other  physical  phenomena,  but 
one  with  them ;  and  matter  and  force  are  the  two  names  of  the 
one  artist  who  fashions  the  living  as  well  as  the  lifeless.  Hence, 
living  bodies  should  obey  the  same  great  laws  as  other  matter  — 
nor,  throughout  nature,  is  there  a  law  of  wider  appHcation  than 
this,  that  a  body-  impelled  by  two  forces  takes  the  direction  of 
their  resultant.  But  living  bodies  may  be  regarded  as  nothing 
but  extremely  complex  bundles  of  forces  held  in  a  mass  of  matter, 
as  the  complex  forces  of  a  magnet  are  held  in  the  steel  by  its 
coercive  force ;  and  since  the  differences  of  sex  are  comparatively 
slight,  or,  in  other  words,  the  sum  of  the  forces  in  each  has  a  very 
similar  tendency,  their  resultant,  the  offspring,  may  reasonably 
be  expected  to  deviate  but  little  from  a  course  parallel  to  either, 
or  to  both. 

Represent  the  reason  of  the  law  to  ourselves  by  what  physical 
metaphor  or  analogy  we  will,  however,  the  great  matter  is  to 
apprehend  its  existence  and  the  importance  of  the  consequences 
deducible  from  it.  For  things  which  are  like  to  the  same  are  like 
to  one  another,  and  if,  in  a  great  series  of  generations,  every  off- 
spring is  Hke  its  parent,  it  follows  that  all  the  offspring  and  all  the 
parents  must  be  like  one  another;  and  that,  given  an  original 
parental  stock  with  the  opportunity  of  undisturbed  multiplica- 
tion, the  law  in  question  necessitates  the  production,  in  course  of 
time,  of  an  indefinitely  large  group,  the  whole  of  whose  members 
are  at  once  very  similar  and  are  blood  relations,  having  descended 
from  the  same  parent,  or  pair  of  parents.  The  proof  that  all  the 
members  of  any  given  group  of  animals,  or  plants,  had  thus  de- 
scended would  be  ordinarily  considered  sufficient  to  entitle  them 
to  the  rank  of  physiological  species,  for  most  physiologists  con- 
sider species  to  be  definable  as  "  the  offspring  of  a  single  primitive 
stock." 

But  though  it  is  quite  true  that  all  those  groups  we  call  species 


DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  207 

may,  according  to  the  known  laws  of  reproduction,  have  de- 
scended from  a  single  stock,  and  though  it  is  very  Hkely  they 
really  have  done  so,  yet  this  conclusion  rests  on  deduction  and 
can  hardly  hope  to  estabhsh  itself  upon  a  basis  of  observation. 
And  the  primitiveness  of  the  supposed  single  stock,  which,  after 
all,  is  the  essential  part  of  the  matter,  is  not  only  a  hypothesis, 
but  one  which  has  not  a  shadow  of  foundation,  if  by  "  primitive  " 
be  meant  "independent  of  any  other  living  being."  A  scientific 
definition,  of  which  an  unwarrantable  hypothesis  forms  an  essen- 
tial part,  carries  its  condemnation  within  itself ;  but  even  sup- 
posing such  a  definition  were,  in  form,  tenable,  the  physiologist 
who  should  attempt  to  apply  it  in  nature  would  soon  find  him- 
self involved  in  great,  if  not  inextricable  diflSculties.  As  we  have 
said,  it  is  indubitable  that  offspring  tend  to  resemble  the  parental 
organism,  but  it  is  equally  true  that  the  similarity  attained  never 
amounts  to  identity,  either  in  form  or  in  structure.  There  is  al- 
ways a  certain  amount  of  deviation,  not  only  from  the  precise 
characters  of  a  single  parent,  but  when,  as  in  most  animals  and 
many  plants,  the  sexes  are  lodged  in  distinct  individuals,  from 
an  exact  mean  between  the  two  parents.  And,  indeed,  on  gen- 
eral principles,  this  slight  deviation  seems  as  intelligible  as  the 
general  similarity,  if  we  reflect  how  complex  the  cooperating 
"bundles  of  forces"  are,  and  how  improbable  it  is  that,  in  any 
case,  their  true  resultant  shall  coincide  with  any  mean  between 
the  more  obvious  characters  of  the  two  parents.  Whatever  be 
its  cause,  however,  the  coexistence  of  this  tendency  to  minor 
variation  with  the  tendency  to  general  similarity  is  of  vast  im- 
portance in  its  bearing  on  the  question  of  the  origin  of  species. 

As  a  general  rule,  the  extent  to  which  an  offspring  differs  from 
its  parent  is  slight  enough;  but,  occasionally,  the  amount  of 
difference  is  much  more  strongly  marked,  and  then  the  divergent 
offspring  receives  the  name  of  a  Variety.  Multitudes,  of  what 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe  are  such  varieties,  are  known,  but 
the  origin  of  very  few  has  been  accurately  recorded,  and  of  these 
we  will  select  two  as  more  especially  illustrative  of  the  main  fea- 
tures of  variation.     The  first  of  them  is  that  of  the  "  Ancon,"  or 


2o8  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

"Otter"  sheep,  of  which  a  careful  account  is  given  by  Colonel 
David  Humphreys,  F.R.S.,  in  a  letter  to  Sir  Joseph  Banks,  pub- 
lished in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  for  1 813.  It  appears 
that  one  Seth  Wright,  the  proprietor  of  a  farm  on  the  banks  of 
the  Charles  River,  in  Massachusetts,  possessed  a  flock  of  fifteen 
ewes  and  a  ram  of  the  ordinary  kind.  In  the  year  1791  one  of 
the  ewes  presented  her  owner  with  a  male  lamb,  differing,  for  no 
assignable  reason,  from  its  parents  by  a  proportionally  long  body 
and  short  bandy  legs,  whence  it  was  unable  to  emulate  its  rela- 
tives in  those  sportive  leaps  over  the  neighbors'  fences,  in  which 
they  were  in  the  habit  of  indulging,  much  to  the  good  farmer's 
vexation. 

The  second  case  is  that  detailed  by  a  no  less  unexceptionable 
authority  than  Reaumur,  in  his  Art  de  faire  eclore  les  Poulets. 
A  Maltese  couple,  named  Kelleia,  whose  hands  and  feet  were  con- 
structed upon  the  ordinary  human  model,  had  born  to  them  a  son, 
Gratio,  who  possessed  six  perfectly  movable  fingers  on  each  hand 
and  six  toes,  not  quite  so  well  formed,  on  each  foot.  No  cause 
could  be  assigned  for  the  appearance  of  this  unusual  variety  of 
the  human  species. 

Two  circumstances  are  well  worthy  of  remark  in  both  these 
cases.  In  each,  the  variety  appears  to  have  arisen  in  full  force, 
and,  as  it  were,  per  saltum  ^ ;  a  wide  and  definite  difference  ap- 
pearing, at  once,  between  the  Ancon  ram  and  the  ordinary  sheep ; 
between  the  six-fingered  and  six-toed  Gratio  Kelleia  and  ordinary 
men.  In  neither  case  is  it  possible  to  point  out  any  obvious 
reason  for  the  appearance  of  the  variety.  Doubtless  there  were 
determining  causes  for  these,  as  for  all  other  phenomena ;  but 
they  do  not  appear,  and  we  can  be  tolerably  certain  that  what  are 
ordinarily  understood  as  changes  in  physical  conditions,  as  in 
cUmate,  in  food,  or  the  like,  did  not  take  place  and  had  nothing 
to  do  with  the  matter.  It  was  no  case  of  what  is  commonly  called 
adaptation  to  circumstances ;  but,  to  use  a  conveniently  erro- 
neous phrase,  the  variations  arose  spontaneously.  The  fruitless 
search  after  final  causes  leads  their  pursuers  a  long  way;  but 

1  At  a  jump.  — Editors. 


DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  209 

even  those  hardy  teleologists,  who  are  ready  to  break  through  all 
the  laws  of  physics  in  chase  of  their  favorite  will-o'-the-wisp,  may 
be  puzzled  to  discover  what  purpose  could  be  attained  by  the 
stunted  legs  of  Seth  Wright's  ram  or  the  hexadactyl  members  of 
Gratio  Kelleia. 

Varieties  then  arise  we  know  not  why ;  and  it  is  more  than  prob- 
able that  the  majority  of  varieties  have  arisen  in  the  spontaneous 
manner,  though  we  are,  of  course,  far  from  denying  that  they 
may  be  traced,  in  some  cases,  to  distinct  external  influences 
which  are  assuredly  competent  to  alter  the  character  of  the  tegu- 
mentary  covering,  to  change  color,  to  increase  or  diminish  the 
size  of  muscles,  to  modify  constitution,  and,  among  plants,  to 
give  rise  to  the  metamorphosis  of  stamens  into  petals,  and  so 
forth.  But  however  they  may  have  arisen,  what  especially  in- 
terests us  at  present  is  to  remark  that,  once  in  existence,  varieties 
obey  the  fundamental  law  of  reproduction  that  like  tends  to 
produce  like,  and  their  offspring  exemplify  it  by  tending  to  ex- 
hibit the  same  deviation  from  the  parental  stock  as  themselves. 
Indeed,  there  seems  to  be,  in  many  instances,  a  prepotent  influ- 
ence about  a  newly  arisen  variety  which  gives  it  what  one  may 
call  an  unfair  advantage  over  the  normal  descendants  from  the 
same  stock.  This  is  strikingly  exemplified  by  the  case  of  Gratio 
Kelleia,  who  married  a  woman  with  the  ordinary  pentadactyl  ex- 
tremities, and  had  by  her  four  children,  Salvator,  George,  Andre, 
and  Marie.  Of  these  children  Salvator,  the  eldest  boy,  had  six 
fingers  and  six  toes,  like  his  father;  the  second  and  third,  also  boys, 
had  five  fingers  and  five  toes,  like  their  mother,  though  the  hands 
and  feet  of  George  were  slightly  deformed ;  the  last,  a  girl,  had 
five  fingers  and  five  toes,  but  the  thumbs  were  slightly  deformed. 
The  variety  thus  reproduced  itself  purely  in  the  eldest,  while  the 
normal  type  reproduced  itself  purely  in  the  third,  and  almost 
purely  in  the  second  and  last :  so  that  it  would  seem,  at  first,  as 
if  the  normal  type  were  more  powerful  than  the  variety.  But  all 
these  children  grew  up  and  intermarried  with  normal  wives  and 
husbands,  and  then,  note  what  took  place :  Salvator  had  four 
children,  three  of  whom  exhibited  the  hexadactyl  members  of 


2IO  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

their  grandfather  and  father,  while  the  youngest  had  the  penta- 
dactyl  limbs  of  the  mother  and  grandmother ;  so  that  here,  not- 
withstanding a  double  pentadactyl  dilution  of  the  blood,  the 
hexadactyl  variety  had  the  best  of  it.  The  same  prepotency 
of  the  variety  was  still  more  markedly  exemplified  in  the  progeny 
of  two  of  the  other  children,  Marie  and  George.  Marie  (whose 
thumbs  only  were  deformed)  gave  birth  to  a  boy  with  six  toes, 
and  three  other  normally  formed  children ;  but  George,  who  was 
not  quite  so  pure  a  pentadactyl,  begot,  first,  two  girls,  each  of 
whom  had  six  fingers  and  toes;  then  a  girl  with  six  fingers  on 
each  hand  and  six  toes  on  the  right  foot,  but  only  five  toes  on  the 
left ;  and  lastly,  a  boy  with  only  five  fingers  and  toes.  In  these 
instances,  therefore,  the  variety,  as  it  were,  leaped  over  one  gen- 
eration to  reproduce  itself  in  full  force  in  the  next.  Finally,  the 
purely  pentadactyl  Andre  was  the  father  of  many  children,  not 
one  of  whom  departed  from  the  normal  parental  type. 

If  a  variation  which  approaches  the  nature  of  a  monstrosity 
can  strive  thus  forcibly  to  reproduce  itself,  it  is  not  wonderful 
that  less  aberrant  modifications  should  tend  to  be  preserved  even 
more  strongly ;  and  the  history  of  the  Ancon  sheep  is,  in  this  re- 
spect, particularly  instructive.     With   the   "cuteness"  charac- 
teristic of  their  nation,   the  neighbors  of   the   Massachusetts 
farmer  imagined  it  would  be  an  excellent  thing  if  all  his  sheep 
were  imbued  with  the  stay-at-home  tendencies  enforced  by  na- 
ture upon  the  newly  arrived  ram ;  and  they  advised  Wright  to 
kill  the  old  patriarch  of  his  fold,  and  install  the  Ancon  ram  in  his 
place.     The  result  justified  their  sagacious  anticipations,  and 
coincided  very  nearly  with  what  occurred  to  the  progeny  of 
Gratio  Kelleia.     The  young  lambs  were  almost  always  either  pure 
Ancons  or  pure  ordinary  sheep.      But  when  sufficient    Ancon 
sheep  were  obtained  to  interbreed  with  one  another,  it  was  found 
that  the  offspring  was  always  pure  Ancon.     Colonel  Humphreys, 
in  fact,  states  that  he  was  acquainted  with  only  "one  question- 
able case  of  a  contrary  nature."     Here,  then,  is  a  remarkable  and 
well-established  instance,  not  only  of  a  very  distinct  race  being 
established  per  saltum,  but  of  that  race  breeding  "true"  at  once, 


DARWIN  ON   THE  ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES  211 

and  showing  no  mixed  forms,  even  when  crossed  with  another 
breed. 

By  taking  care  to  select  Ancons  of  both  sexes  for  breeding 
from,  it  thus  became  easy  to  estabHsh  an  extremely  well-marked 
race,  so  pecuhar  that  even  when  herded  with  other  sheep,  it  was 
noted  that  the  Ancons  kept  together.  And  there  is  every  reason 
to  believe  that  the  existence  of  this  breed  might  have  been  in- 
definitely protracted ;  but  the  introduction  of  the  Merino  sheep, 
which  were  not  only  very  superior  to  the  Ancons  in  wool  and 
meat,  but  quite  as  quiet  and  orderly,  led  to  the  complete  neglect 
of  the  new  breed,  so  that,  in  181 3,  Colonel  Humphreys  found  it 
difl&cult  to  obtain  the  specimen  whose  skeleton  was  presented  to 
Sir  Joseph  Banks.  We  believe  that  for  many  years  no  remnant 
of  it  has  existed  in  the  United  States. 

Gratio  Kelleia  was  not  the  progenitor  of  a  race  of  six-fingered 
men,  as  Seth  Wright's  ram  became  a  nation  of  Ancon  sheep, 
though  the  tendency  of  the  variety  to  perpetuate  itself  appears  to 
have  been  fully  as  strong  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  And 
the  reason  of  the  difference  is  not  far  to  seek.  Seth  Wright  took 
care  not  to  weaken  the  Ancon  blood  by  matching  his  Ancon 
ewes  with  any  but  males  of  the  same  variety,  while  Gratio 
Kelleia's  sons  were  too  far  removed  from  the  patriarchal  times  to 
intermarry  with  their  sisters ;  and  his  grandchildren  seem  not  to 
have  been  attracted  by  their  six-fingered  cousins.  In  other 
words,  in  the  one  example  a  race  was  produced,  because,  for  sev- 
eral generations,  care  was  taken  to  select  both  parents  of  the  breed- 
ing stock  from  animals  exhibiting  a  tendency  to  vary  in  the 
same  direction ;  while  in  the  other  no  race  was  evolved,  because 
no  such  selection  was  exercised.  A  race  is  a  propagated  variety, 
and  as,  by  the  laws  of  reproduction,  offspring  tend  to  assume 
the  parental  forms,  they  will  be  more  likely  to  propagate  a 
variation  exhibited  by  both  parents  than  that  possessed  by  only 
one. 

There  is  no  organ  of  the  body  of  an  animal  which  may  not,  and 
does  not,  occasionally,  vary  more  or  less  from  the  normal  type ; 
and  there  is  no  variation  which  may  not  be  transmitted,  and 


212  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

which,  if  selectively  transmitted,  may  not  become  the  founda- 
tion of  a  race.  This  great  truth,  sometimes  forgotten  by  phi- 
losophers, has  long  been  familiar  to  practical  agriculturists  and 
breeders;  and  upon  it  rest  all  the  methods  of  improving  the 
breeds  of  domestic  animals,  which  for  the  last  century  have  been 
followed  with  so  much  success  in  England.  Color,  form,  size, 
texture  of  hair  or  wool,  proportions  of  various  parts,  strength 
or  weakness  of  constitution,  tendency  to  fatten  or  to  remain  lean, 
to  give  much  or  little  milk,  speed,  strength,  temper,  intelligence, 
special  instincts ;  there  is  not  one  of  these  characters  whose  trans- 
mission is  not  an  everyday  occurrence  within  the  experience  of 
cattle  breeders,  stock  farmers,  horse  dealers,  and  dog  and  poultry 
fanciers.  Nay,  it  is  only  the  other  day  that  an  eminent  physiol- 
ogist, Dr.  Brown  Sequard,  communicated  to  the  Royal  Society 
his  discovery  that  epilepsy,  artificially  produced  in  guinea  pigs, 
by  a  means  which  he  has  discovered,  is  transmitted  to  their  off- 
spring. 

But  a  race,  once  produced,  is  no  more  a  fixed  and  immutable 
entity  than  the  stock  whence  it  sprang ;  variations  arise  among 
its  members,  and  as  these  variations  are  transmitted  like  any 
others,  new  races  may  be  developed  out  of  the  preexisting  one 
ad  infinitum,  or,  at  least,  within  any  limit  at  present  determined. 
Given  sufficient  time  and  sufficiently  careful  selection,  and  the 
multitude  of  races  which  may  arise  from  a  common  stock  is  as 
astonishing  as  are  the  extreme  structural  differences  which  they 
may  present.  A  remarkable  example  of  this  is  to  be  found  in 
the  rock  pigeon,  which  Mr.  Darwin  has,  in  our  opinion,  satis- 
factorily demonstrated  to  be  the  progenitor  of  all  our  domestic 
pigeons,  of  which  there  are  certainly  more  than  a  hundred  well- 
marked  races.  The  most  noteworthy  of  these  races  are  the  four 
great  stocks  known  to  the  "fancy"  as  tumblers,  pouters,  carriers, 
and  fantails  —  birds  which  not  only  differ  most  singularly  in  size, 
color,  and  habits,  but  in  the  form  of  the  beak  and  of  the  skull ;  in 
the  proportions  of  the  beak  to  the  skull ;  in  the  number  of  tail- 
feathers;  in  the  absolute  and  relative  size  of  the  feet;  in  the 
presence  or  absence  of  the  uropygial  gland;  in  the  number  of 


DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  213 

vertebrae  in  the  back;  in  short,  in  precisely  those  characters 
in  which  the  genera  and  species  of  birds  differ  from  one 
another. 

And  it  is  most  remarkable  and  instructive  to  observe  that 
none  of  these  races  can  be  shown  to  have  been  originated  by  the 
action  of  changes  in  what  are  commonly  called  external  circum- 
stances, upon  the  wild  rock  pigeon.  On  the  contrary,  from  time 
immemorial,  pigeon  fanciers  have  had  essentially  similar  methods 
of  treating  their  pets,  which  have  been  housed,  fed,  protected,  and 
cared  for  in  much  the  same  way  in  all  pigeonries.  In  fact,  there 
is  no  case  better  adapted  than  that  of  the  pigeons  to  refute  the 
doctrine  which  one  sees  put  forth  on  high  authority,  that  "no 
other  characters  than  those  founded  on  the  development  of  bone 
for  the  attachment  of  muscles  "  are  capable  of  variation.  In  pre- 
cise contradiction  of  this  hasty  assertion,  Mr.  Darwin's  re- 
searches prove  that  the  skeleton  of  the  wings  in  domestic  pigeons 
has  hardly  varied  at  all  from  that  of  the  wild  type ;  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  is  in  exactly  those  respects,  such  as  the  relative 
length  of  the  beak  and  skull,  the  number  of  the  vertebrae,  and 
the  number  of  the  tail-feathers,  in  which  muscular  exertion  can 
have  no  important  influence,  that  the  utmost  amount  of  varia- 
tion has  taken  place. 

We  have  said  that  the  following  out  of  the  properties  exhibited 
by  physiological  species  would  lead  us  into  difficulties,  and  at 
this  point  they  begin  to  be  obvious ;  for  if,  as  a  result  of  spon- 
taneous variation  and  of  selective  breeding,  the  progeny  of  a 
common  stock  may  become  separated  into  groups  distinguished 
from  one  another  by  constant,  not  sexual,  morphological  charac- 
ters, it  is  clear  that  the  physiological  definition  of  species  is  likely 
to  clash  with  the  morphological  definition.  No  one  would  hesi- 
tate to  describe  the  pouter  and  the  tumbler  as  distinct  species, 
if  they  were  found  fossil,  or  if  their  skins  and  skeletons  were 
imported,  as  those  of  exotic  wild  birds  commonly  are;  and, 
without  doubt,  if  considered  alone,  they  are  good  and  distinct 
morphological  species.     On  the  other  hand,  they  are  not  physi- 


214  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

ological  species,  for  they  are  descended  from  a  common  stock, 
the  rock  pigeon. 

Under  these  circumstances,  as  it  is  admitted  on  all  sides  that 
races  occur  in  nature,  how  are  we  to  know  whether  any  appar- 
ently distinct  animals  are  really  of  different  physiological  species, 
or  not,  seeing  that  the  amount  of  morphological  difference  is  no 
safe  guide  ?  Is  there  any  test  of  a  physiological  species  ?  The 
usual  answer  of  physiologists  is  in  the  affirmative.  It  is  said 
that  such  a  test  is  to  be  found  in  the  phenomena  of  hybridization 
—  in  the  results  of  crossing  races,  as  compared  with  the  results  of 
crossing  species. 

So  far  as  the  evidence  goes  at  present,  individuals,  of  what  are 
certainly  known  to  be  mere  races  produced  by  selection,  however 
distinct  they  may  appear  to  be,  not  only  breed  freely  together, 
but  the  offspring  of  such  crossed  races  are  also  perfectly  fertile 
with  one  another.  Thus,  the  spaniel  and  the  greyhound,  the 
dray  horse  and  the  Arab,  the  pouter  and  the  tumbler,  breed  to- 
gether with  perfect  freedom,  and  their  mongrels,  if  matched  with 
other  mongrels  of  the  same  kind,  are  equally  fertile. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  individuals 
of  many  natural  species  are  either  absolutely  infertile,  if  crossed 
with  individuals  of  other  species,  or,  if  they  give  rise  to  hybrid 
offspring,  the  hybrids  so  produced  are  infertile  when  paired  to- 
gether. The  horse  and  the  ass,  for  instance,  if  so  crossed,  give  rise 
to  the  mule,  and  there  is  no  certain  evidence  of  offspring  ever 
having  been  produced  by  a  male  and  female  mule.  The  unions 
of  the  rock  pigeon  and  the  ring  pigeon  appear  to  be  equally 
barren  of  result.  Here,  then,  says  the  physiologist,  we  have  a 
means  of  distinguishing  any  two  true  species  from  any  two  varie- 
ties. If  a  male  and  a  female,  selected  from  each  group,  produce 
offspring,  and  that  offspring  is  fertile  with  others  produced  in  the 
same  way,  the  groups  are  races  and  not  species.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  no  result  ensues,  or  if  the  offspring  are  infertile  with  others 
produced  in  the  same  way,  they  are  true  physiological  species. 
The  test  would  be  an  admirable  one,  if,  in  the  first  place,  it  were 
always  practicable  to  apply  it,  and  if,  in  the  second,  it  always 


DARWIN  ON  THE   ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  215 

yielded  results  susceptible  of  a  definite  interpretation.  Unfortu- 
nately, in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  this  touchstone  for  species 
is  wholly  inapplicable. 

The  constitution  of  many  wild  animals  is  so  altered  by  confine- 
ment that  they  will  not  even  breed  with  their  own  females,  so 
that  the  negative  results  obtained  from  crosses  are  of  no  value, 
and  the  antipathy  of  wild  animals  of  different  species  for  one 
another,  or  even  of  wild  and  tame  members  of  the  same  species, 
is  ordinarily  so  great  that  it  is  hopeless  to  look  for  such  unions  in 
nature.  The  hermaphrodism  of  most  plants,  the  difficulty  in  the 
way  of  ensuring  the  absence  of  their  own,  or  the  proper  working 
of  other  pollen,  are  obstacles  of  no  less  magnitude  in  applying  the 
test  to  them.  And  in  both  animals  and  plants  is  superadded  the 
further  difficulty,  that  experiments  must  be  continued  over  a  long 
time  for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  the  fertility  of  the  mongrel 
or  hybrid  progeny,  as  well  as  of  the  first  crosses  from  which  they 
spring. 

Not  only  do  these  great  practical  difficulties  lie  in  the  way  of 
applying  the  hybridization  test,  but  even  when  this  oracle  can 
be  questioned,  its  replies  are  sometimes  as  doubtful  as  those  of 
Delphi.  For  example,  cases  are  cited  by  Mr.  Darwin,  of  plants 
which  are  more  fertile  with  the  pollen  of  another  species  than  with 
their  own ;  and  there  are  others,  such  as  certain /mc/,  whose  male 
element  will  fertilize  the  ovule  of  a  plant  of  distinct  species,  while 
the  males  of  the  latter  species  are  ineffective  with  the  females  of 
the  first.  So  that,  in  the  last-named  instance,  a  physiologist 
who  should  cross  the  two  species  in  one  way,  would  decide  that 
they  were  true  species  ;  while  another,  who  should  cross  them  in 
the  reverse  way,  would,  with  equal  justice,  according  to  the  rule, 
pronounce  them  to  be  mere  races.  Several  plants,  which  there 
is  great  reason  to  believe  are  mere  varieties,  are  almost  sterile 
when  crossed ;  while  both  animals  and  plants,  which  have  al- 
ways been  regarded  by  naturalists  as  of  distinct  species,  turn  out, 
when  the  test  is  applied,  to  be  perfectly  fertile.  Again,  the  sterility 
or  fertility  of  crosses  seems  to  bear  no  relation  to  the  structural 
resemblances  or  differences  of  the  members  of  any  two  groups. 


2i6  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

Mr.  Darwin  has  discussed  this  question  with  singular  ability 
and  circumspection,  and  his  conclusions  are  summed  up  as 
follows,  at  page  276  of  his  work:  — 

"First  crosses  between  forms  sufficiently  distinct  to  be  ranked 
as  species,  and  their  hybrids,  are  very  generally,  but  not  uni- 
versally, sterile.  The  sterility  is  of  all  degrees,  and  is  often  so 
slight  that  the  two  most  careful  experimentalists  who  have  ever 
lived  have  come  to  diametrically  opposite  conclusions  in  rank- 
ing forms  by  this  test.  The  sterility  is  innately  variable  in  in- 
dividuals of  the  same  species,  and  is  eminently  susceptible  of 
favorable  and  unfavorable  conditions.  The  degree  of  sterility 
does  not  strictly  follow  systematic  affinity,  but  is  governed  by 
several  curious  and  complex  laws.  It  is  generally  different,  and 
sometimes  widely  different,  in  reciprocal  crosses  between  the 
same  two  species.  It  is  not  always  equal  in  degree  in  a  first 
cross,  and  in  the  hybrid  produced  from  this  cross. 

"In  the  same  manner  as  in  grafting  trees,  the  capacity  of  one 
species  or  variety  to  take  on  another  is  incidental  on  generally 
unknown  differences  in  their  vegetative  systems;  so  in  crossing, 
the  greater  or  less  facility  of  one  species  to  unite  with  another  is 
incidental  on  unknown  differences  in  their  reproductive  systems. 
There  is  no  more  reason  to  think  that  species  have  been  specially 
endowed  with  various  degrees  of  sterility  to  prevent  them  cross- 
ing and  breeding  in  nature,  than  to  think  that  trees  have  been 
specially  endowed  with  various  and  somewhat  analogous  degrees 
of  difficulty  in  being  grafted  together,  in  order  to  prevent  them 
becoming  inarched  in  our  forests. 

"  The  sterility  of  first  crosses  between  pure  species,  which  have 
their  reproductive  systems  perfect,  seems  to  depend  on  several 
circumstances ;  in  some  cases  largely  on  the  early  death  of  the 
embryo.  The  sterility  of  hybrids  which  have  their  reproductive 
systems  imperfect,  and  which  have  had  this  system  and  their 
whole  organization  disturbed  by  being  compounded  of  two  dis- 
tinct species,  seems  closely  allied  to  that  sterility  which  so  fre- 
quently affects  pure  species  when  their  natural  conditions  of  life 
have  been  disturbed.     This  view  is  supported  by  a  parallelism 


DARWIN   ON  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  217 

of  another  kind ;  namely,  that  the  crossing  of  forms  only  slightly 
different  is  favorable  to  the  vigor  and  fertility  of  the  offspring ; 
and  that  slight  changes  in  the  conditions  of  life  are  apparently 
favorable  to  the  vigor  and  fertility  of  all  organic  beings.  It  is 
not  surprising  that  the  degree  of  difficulty  in  uniting  two  species, 
and  the  degree  of  sterility  of  their  hybrid  offspring  should  gener- 
ally correspond,  though  due  to  distinct  causes ;  for  both  depend 
on  the  amount  of  difference  of  some  kind  between  the  species 
which  are  crossed.  Nor  is  it  surprising  that  the  faciUty  of  effect- 
ing a  first  cross,  the  fertility  of  hybrids  produced  from  it,  and  the 
capacity  of  being  grafted  together  —  though  this  latter  capacity 
evidently  depends  on  widely  different  circumstances  —  should  all 
run  to  a  certain  extent  parallel  with  the  systematic  affinity  of  the 
forms  which  are  subjected  to  experiment ;  for  systematic  affinity 
attempts  to  express  all  kinds  of  resemblance  between  all  species. 

"  First  crosses  between  forms  known  to  be  varieties,  or  suffi- 
ciently alike  to  be  considered  as  varieties,  and  their  mongrel 
offspring,  are  very  generally,  but  not  quite  universally,  fertile. 
Nor  is  this  nearly  general  and  perfect  fertility  surprising,  when 
we  remember  how  liable  we  are  to  argue  in  a  circle  with  respect 
to  varieties  in  a  state  of  nature ;  and  when  we  remember  that 
the  greater  number  of  varieties  have  been  produced  under  do- 
mestication by  the  selection  of  mere  external  differences,  and 
not  of  differences  in  the  reproductive  system.  In  all  other  re- 
spects, excluding  fertility,  there  is  a  close  general  resemblance 
between  hybrids  and  mongrels." 

We  fully  agree  with  the  general  tenor  of  this  weighty  passage, 
but  forcible  as  are  these  arguments,  and  little  as  the  value  of 
fertility  or  infertility  as  a  test  of  species  may  be,  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  really  important  fact,  so  far  as  the  inquiry 
into  the  origin  of  species  goes,  is,  that  there  are  such  things  in 
nature  as  groups  oof  animals  and  of  plants,  whose  members  are 
incapable  of  fertile  union  with  those  of  other  groups ;  and  that 
there  are  such  things  as  hybrids,  which  are  absolutely  sterile  when 
crossed  with  other  hybrids.  For  if  such  phenomena  as  these 
were  exhibited  by  only  two  of  those  assemblages  of  living  objects, 


2i8  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

to  which  the  name  of  species  (whether  it  be  used  in  its  physio- 
logical or  in  its  morphological  sense)  is  given,  it  would  have  to  be 
accounted  for  by  any  theory  of  the  origin  of  species,  and  every 
theory  which  could  not  account  for  it  would  be,  so  far,  imperfect. 

Up  to  this  point  we  have  been  dealing  with  matters  of  fact, 
and  the  statements  which  we  have  laid  before  the  reader  would, 
to  the  best  of  our  knowledge,  be  admitted  to  contain  a  fair  expo- 
sition of  what  is  at  present  known  respecting  the  essential  prop- 
erties of  species,  by  all  who  have  studied  the  question.  And 
whatever  may  be  his  theoretical  views,  no  naturalist  will  prob- 
ably be  disposed  to  demur  to  the  following  summary  of  that 
exposition :  — 

Living  beings,  whether  animals  or  plants,  are  divisible  into 
multitudes  of  distinctly  definable  kinds,  which  are  morphological 
species.  They  are  also  divisible  into  groups  of  individuals,  which 
breed  freely  together,  tending  to  reproduce  their  like,  and  are 
physiological  species.  Normally,  resembling  their  parents,  the 
offspring  of  members  of  these  species  are  still  liable  to  vary,  and 
the  variation  may  be  perpetuated  by  selection,  as  a  race,  which 
race,  in  many  cases,  presents  all  the  characteristics  of  a  morpho- 
logical species.  But  it  is  not  as  yet  proved  that  a  race  ever 
exhibits,  when  crossed  with  another  race  of  the  same  species, 
those  phenomena  of  hybridization  which  are  exhibited  by  many 
species  when  crossed  with  other  species.  On  the  other  hand, 
not  only  is  it  not  proved  that  all  species  give  rise  to  hybrids  in- 
fertile inter  se,  but  there  is  much  reason  to  believe  that,  in  cross- 
ing, species  exhibit  every  gradation  from  perfect  sterility  to  per- 
fect fertility. 

Such  are  the  most  essential  characteristics  of  species.  Even 
were  man  not  one  of  them  —  a  member  of  the  same  system  and 
subject  to  the  same  laws  —  the  question  of  their  origin,  their 
causal  connection,  that  is,  with  the  other  phenomena  of  the 
universe,  must  have  attracted  his  attention,  as  soon  as  his  intelli- 
gence had  raised  itself  above  the  level  of  his  daily  wants. 

Indeed,  history  relates  that  such  was  the  case,  and  has  em- 
balmed for  us  the  speculations  upon  the  origin  of  living  beings, 


DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  219 

tvhich  were  among  the  earliest  products  of  the  dawning  intellec- 
tual activity  of  man.  In  those  early  days  positive  knowledge 
was  not  to  be  had,  but  the  craving  after  it  needed,  at  all  hazards, 
to  be  satisfied,  and  according  to  the  country,  or  the  turn  of 
thought  of  the  speculator,  the  suggestion  that  all  living  things 
arose  from  the  mud  of  the  Nile,  from  a  primeval  egg,  or  from 
some  more  anthropomorphic  agency,  afforded  a  sufficient  rest- 
ing place  for  his  curiosity.  The  myths  of  Paganism  are  as  dead 
as  Osiris  or  Zeus,  and  the  man  who  should  revive  them,  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  knowledge  of  our  time,  would  be  justly  laughed  to 
scorn ;  but  the  coeval  imaginations  current  among  the  rude 
inhabitants  of  Palestine,  recorded  by  writers  whose  very  name 
and  age  are  admitted  by  every  scholar  to  be  unknown,  have  un- 
fortunately not  yet  shared  their  fate,  but,  even  at  this  day,  are 
regarded  by  nine  tenths  of  the  civilized  world  as  the  authorita- 
tive standard  of  fact  and  the  criterion  of  the  justice  of  scientific 
conclusions,  in  all  that  relates  to  the  origin  of  things,  and,  among 
them,  of  species.  In  this  nineteenth  century,  as  at  the  dawn  of 
modern  physical  science,  the  cosmogony  of  the  semibarbarous 
Hebrew  is  the  incubus  of  the  philosopher  and  the  opprobrium 
of  the  orthodox.  Who  shall  number  the  patient  and  earnest 
seekers  after  truth,  from  the  days  of  Galileo  until  now,  whose 
lives  have  been  embittered  and  their  good  name  blasted  by  the 
mistaken  zeal  of  bibliolaters?  Who  shall  count  the  host  of 
weaker  men  whose  sense  of  truth  has  been  destroyed  in  the  effort 
to  harmonize  impossibilities  —  whose  life  has  been  wasted  in  the 
attempt  to  force  the  generous  new  wine  of  science  into  the  old 
bottles  of  Judaism,  compelled  by  the  outcry  of  the  same  strong 
party  ? 

It  is  true  that  if  philosophers  have  suffered,  their  cause  has  been 
amply  avenged.  Extinguished  theologians  lie  about  the  cradle 
of  every  science  as  the  strangled  snakes  beside  that  of  Hercules  ; 
and  history  records  that  whenever  science  and  orthodoxy 
have  been  fairly  opposed,  the  latter  has  been  forced  to  retire 
from  the  lists,  bleeding  and  crushed,  if  not  annihilated ;  scotched, 
if  not  slain.     But  orthodoxy  is  the  Bourbon  of  the  world  of 


220  THOMAS   HENRY   HUXLEY 

thought.  It  learns  not,  neither  can  it  forget ;  and  though  at 
present  bewildered  and  afraid  to  move,  it  is  as  willing  as  ever  to 
insist  that  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  contains  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  sound  science,  and  to  visit  with  such  petty  thun- 
derbolts as  its  half-paralyzed  hands  can  hurl,  those  who  refuse 
to  degrade  nature  to  the  level  of  primitive  Judaism. 

Philosophers,  on  the  other  hand,  have  no  such  aggressive  ten- 
dencies. With  eyes  fixed  on  the  noble  goal  to  which  per  aspera 
et  ardua  ^  they  tend,  they  may,  now  and  then,  be  stirred  to 
momentary  wrath  by  the  unnecessary  obstacles  with  which  the 
ignorant  or  the  malicious  encumber,  if  they  cannot  bar,  the 
difficult  path ;  but  why  should  their  souls  be  deeply  vexed  ? 
The  majesty  of  Fact  is  on  their  side,  and  the  elemental  forms  of 
nature  are  working  for  them.  Not  a  star  comes  to  the  meridian 
at  its  calculated  time  but  testifies  to  the  justice  of  their  methods 
—  their  beliefs  are  "one  with  the  falling  rain  and  with  the  grow- 
ing corn."  By  doubt  they  are  established,  and  open  inquiry  is 
their  bosom  friend.  Such  men  have  no  fear  of  traditions,  however 
venerable,  and  no  respect  for  them  when  they  become  mischiev- 
ous and  obstructive ;  but  they  have  better  than  mere  antiquarian 
business  in  hand,  and  if  dogmas,  which  ought  to  be  fossil  but  are 
not,  are  not  forced  upon  their  notice,  they  are  too  happy  to  treat 
them  as  nonexistent. 

The  hypotheses  respecting  the  origin  of  species  which  profess 
to  stand  upon  a  scientific  basis,  and,  as  such,  alone  demand 
serious  attention,  are  of  two  kinds.  The  one,  the  "special  crea- 
tion" hypothesis,  presumes  every  species  to  have  originated 
from  one  or  more  stocks,  these  not  being  the  result  of  the  modi- 
fication of  any  other  form  of  living  matter  —  or  arising  by  natu- 
ral agencies  —  but  being  produced,  as  such,  by  a  supernatural 
creative  act. 

The  other,  the  so-called  "transmutation"  hypothesis,  con- 
siders that  all  existing  species  are  the  result  of  the  modification  of 
preexisting  species  and  those  of  their  predecessors,  by  agencies 
^  By  rough  and  steep  paths.  —  Editors. 


DARWIN  ON   THE   ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES  221 

similar  to  those  which  at  the  present  day  produce  varieties  and 
races,  and  therefore  in  an  altogether  natural  way;  and  it  is  a 
probable,  though  not  a  necessary  consequence  of  this  hypothesis, 
that  all  living  beings  have  arisen  from  a  single  stock.  With 
respect  to  the  origin  of  this  primitive  stock  or  stocks,  the  doc- 
trine of  the  origin  of  species  is  obviously  not  necessarily  concerned. 
The  transmutation  hypothesis,  for  example,  is  perfectly  consist- 
ent either  with  the  conception  of  a  special  creation  of  the  primi- 
tive germ,  or  with  the  supposition  of  its  having  arisen,  as  a  modi- 
fication of  inorganic  matter,  by  natural  causes. 

The  doctrine  of  special  creation  owes  its  existence  very  largely 
to  the  supposed  necessity  of  making  science  accord  with  the 
Hebrew  cosmogony;  but  it  is  curious  to  observe  that,  as  the 
doctrine  is  at  present  maintained  by  men  of  science,  it  is  as  hope- 
lessly inconsistent  with  the  Hebrew  view  as  any  other  hypothesis. 

If  there  be  any  result  which  has  come  more  clearly  out  of  geo-' 
logical  investigation  than  another,  it  is,  that  the  vast  series  of 
extinct  animals  and  plants  is  not  divisible,  as  it  was  once  sup- 
posed to  be,  into  distinct  groups,  separated  by  sharply  marked 
boundaries.  There  are  no  great  gulfs  between  epochs  and  forma- 
tions —  no  successive  periods  marked  by  the  appearance  of 
plants,  of  water  animals,  and  of  land  animals,  en  masse.  Every 
year  adds  to  the  list  of  links  between  what  the  older  geologists 
supposed  to  be  widely  separated  epochs  :  witness  the  crags 
linking  the  Drift  with  the  older  Tertiaries ;  the  Maestricht  beds 
linking  the  Tertiaries  with  the  Chalk ;  the  St.  Cassian  beds  ex- 
hibiting an  abundant  fauna  of  mixed  Mesozoic  and  Paleozoic 
types,  in  rocks  of  an  epoch  once  supposed  to  be  eminently  poor 
in  life;  witness,  lastly,  the  incessant  disputes  as  to  whether  a 
given  stratum  shall  be  reckoned  Devonian  or  Carboniferous,  Si- 
lurian or  Devonian,  Cambrian  or  Silurian. 

This  truth  is  further  illustrated  in  a  most  interesting  manner 
by  the  impartial  and  highly  competent  testimony  of  M.  Pictet, 
from  whose  calculations  of  what  percentage  of  the  genera  of 
animals  existing  in  any  formation  lived  during  the  preceding 
formation,  it  results  that  in  no  case  is  the  proportion  less  than 


222  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXJ.EY 

one  third,  or  T)2>  P^^  cent.  It  is  the  Triassic  formation,  or  the 
commencement  of  the  Mesozoic  epoch,  which  has  received  this 
smallest  inheritance  from  preceding  ages.  The  other  formations 
not  uncommonly  exhibit  60,  80,  or  even  94  per  cent  of  genera  in 
common  with  those  whose  remains  are  embedded  in  their  prede- 
cessor. Not  only  is  this  true,  but  the  subdivisions  of  each  forma- 
tion exhibit  new  species  characteristic  of,  and  found  only  in, 
them ;  and  in  many  cases,  as  in  the  Lias,  for  example,  the  separate 
beds  of  these  subdivisions  are  distinguished  by  well-marked  and 
peculiar  forms  of  life.  A  section  a  hundred  feet  thick  will  ex- 
hibit at  different  heights  a  dozen  species  of  ammonite,  none  of 
which  passes  beyond  its  particular  zone  of  limestone  or  clay 
into  the  zone  below  it  or  into  that  above  it ;  so  that  those  who 
adopt  the  doctrine  of  special  creation  must  be  prepared  to  admit, 
that  at  intervals  of  time,  corresponding  with  the  thickness  of 
these  beds,  the  Creator  thought  fit  to  interfere  with  the  natural 
course  of  events  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  new  ammonite. 
It  is  not  easy  to  transplant  one's  self  into  the  frame  of  mind  of 
those  who  can  accept  such  a  conclusion  as  this,  on  any  evidence 
short  of  absolute  demonstration ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  what 
is  to  be  gained  by  so  doing,  since,  as  we  have  said,  it  is  obvious 
that  such  a  view  of  the  origin  of  living  beings  is  utterly  opposed 
to  the  Hebrew  cosmogony.  Deserving  no  aid  from  the  powerful 
arm  of  bibliolatry,  then,  does  the  received  form  of  the  hypothesis 
of  special  creation  derive  any  support  from  science  or  sound 
logic  ?  Assuredly  not  much.  The  arguments  brought  forward 
in  its  favor  all  take  one  form  :  If  species  were  not  supernaturally 
created,  we  cannot  understand  the  facts  x,  or  y,  or  z;  we  cannot 
understand  the  structure  of  animals  or  plants,  unless  we  suppose 
they  were  contrived  for  special  ends ;  we  cannot  understand  the 
structure  of  the  eye,  except  by  supposing  it  to  have  been  made 
to  see  with ;  we  cannot  understand  instincts,  unless  we  suppose 
animals  to  have  been  miraculously  endowed  with  them. 

As  a  question  of  dialectics,  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  sort 
of  reasoning  is  not  very  formidable  to  those  who  are  not  to  be 
frightened  by  consequences.     It  is  an  argumentum  ad  ignoran- 


DARWIN  ON  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  223 

tiam  —  take  this  explanation  or  be  ignorant.  But  suppose  we 
prefer  to  admit  our  ignorance  rather  than  adopt  a  hypothesis  at 
variance  with  all  the  teachings  of  nature?  Or  suppose  for  a 
moment  we  admit  the  explanation,  and  then  seriously  ask  our- 
selves how  much  the  wiser  are  we  ?  what  does  the  explanation 
explain  ?  Is  it  any  more  than  a  grandiloquent  way  of  announc- 
ing the  fact  that  we  really  know  nothing  about  the  matter  ?  A 
phenomenon  is  explained  when  it  is  shown  to  be  a  case  of  some 
general  law  of  nature ;  but  the  supernatural  interposition  of  the 
Creator  can  by  the  nature  of  the  case  exemplify  no  law,  and  if 
species  have  really  arisen  in  this  way,  it  is  absurd  to  attempt  to 
discuss  their  origin. 

Or,  lastly,  let  us  ask  ourselves  whether  any  amount  of  evi- 
dence which  the  nature  of  our  faculties  permits  us  to  attain,  can 
justify  us  in  asserting  that  any  phenomenon  is  out  of  the  reach  of 
natural  causation.  To  this  end  it  is  obviously  necessary^  that  we 
should  know  all  the  consequences  to  which  all  possible  combina- 
tions, continued  through  unlimited  time,  can  give  rise.  If  we 
knew  these,  and  found  none  competent  to  originate  species,  we 
should  have  good  ground  for  denying  their  origin  by  natural 
causation.  Till  we  know  them,  any  hypothesis  is  better  than 
one  which  involves  us  in  such  miserable  presumption. 

But  the  hypothesis  of  special  creation  is  not  only  a  mere 
specious  mask  for  our  ignorance ;  its  existence  in  Biology  marks 
the  youth  and  imperfection  of  the  science.  For  what  is  the  his- 
tory of  every  science  but  the  history  of  the  elimination  of  the 
notion  of  creative,  or  other  interferences,  with  the  natural  order 
of  the  phenomena  which  are  the  subject  matter  of  that  science  ? 
When  Astronomy  was  young,  "  the  morning  stars  sang  together 
for  joy,"  and  the  planets  were  guided  in  their  courses  by  celestial 
hands.  Now,  the  harmony  of  the  stars  has  resolved  itself  into 
graviLation  according  to  the  inverse  squares  of  the  distances,  and 
the  orbits  of  the  planets  are  deducible  from  the  laws  of  the  forces 
which  allow  a  schoolboy's  stone  to  break  a  window.  The  light- 
ning was  the  angel  of  the  Lord ;  but  it  has  pleased  Providence, 
in  these  modern  times,  that  science  should  make  it  the  humble 


224  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

messenger  of  man,  and  we  know  that  every  flash  that  shimmers 
about  the  horizon  on  a  summer's  evening  is  determined  by  ascer- 
tainable conditions,  and  that  its  direction  and  brightness  might, 
if  our  knowledge  of  these  were  great  enough,  have  been  calcu- 
lated. 

The  solvency  of  great  mercantile  companies  rests  on  the 
validity  of  the  laws  which  have  been  ascertained  to  govern  the 
seeming  irregularity  of  that  human  life  which  the  moralist  be- 
wails as  the  most  uncertain  of  things;  plague,  pestilence,  and 
famine  are  admitted,  by  all  but  fools,  to  be  the  natural  result  of 
causes  for  the  most  part  fully  within  human  control,  and  not  the 
unavoidable  tortures  inflicted  by  wrathful  Omnipotence  upon  his 
helpless  handiwork. 

Harmonious  order  governing  eternally  continuous  progress, 
the  web  and  woof  of  matter  and  force  interweaving  by  slow  de- 
grees, without  a  broken  thread,  that  veil  which  lies  between  us 
and  the  Infinite  —  that  universe  which  alone  we  know,  or  can 
know  —  such  is  the  picture  which  science  draws  of  the  world, 
and  in  proportion  as  any  part  of  that  picture  is  in  unison 
with  the  rest,  so  may  we  feel  sure  that  it  is  rightly  painted. 
ShaU  Biology  alone  remain  out  of  harmony  with  her  sister 
sciences  ? 

Such  arguments  against  the  hypothesis  of  the  direct  creation 
of  species  as  these  are  plainly  enough  deducible  from  general 
considerations  ;  but  there  are,  in  addition,  phenomena  exhibited 
by  species  themselves,  and  yet  not  so  much  a  part  of  their  very 
essence  as  to  have  required  earlier  mention,  which  are  in  the  high- 
est degree  perplexing,  if  we  adopt  the  popularly  accepted  hy- 
pothesis. Such  are  the  facts  of  distribution  in  space  and  in  time ; 
the  singular  phenomena  brought  to  light  by  the  study  of  develop- 
ment ;  the  structural  relations  of  species  upon  which  our  systems 
of  classification  are  founded ;  the  great  doctrines  of  philosophical 
anatomy,  such  as  that  of  homology,  or  of  the  community  of 
structural  plan  exhibited  by  large  groups  of  species  differing  very 
widely  in  their  habits  and  functions. 

The  species  of  animals  which  inhabit  the  sea  on  opposite  sides 


DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES  225 

of  the  isthmus  of  Panama  are  wholly  distinct ;  ^  the  animals  and 
plants  which  inhabit  islands  are  commonly  distinct  from  those 
of  the  neighboring  mainlands,  and  yet  have  a  similarity  of 
aspect.  The  mammals  of  the  latest  Tertiary  epoch  in  the  Old 
and  New  Worlds  belong  to  the  same  genera,  or  family  groups,  as 
those  which  now  inhabit  the  same  great  geographical  area.  The 
crocodilian  reptiles  which  existed  in  the  earliest  Secondary  epoch 
were  similar  in  general  structure  to  those  now  Hving,  but  exhibit 
slight  differences  in  their  vertebrae,  nasal  passages,  and  one  or 
two  other  points.  The  guinea  pig  has  teeth  which  are  shed  before 
it  is  born,  and  hence  can  never  subserve  the  masticatory  purpose 
for  which  they  seem  contrived,  and,  in  like  manner,  the  female 
dugong  has  tusks  which  never  cut  the  gum.  All  the  members  of 
the  same  great  group  run  through  similar  conditions  in  their  de- 
velopment, and  all  their  parts,  in  the  adult  state,  are  arranged 
according  to  the  same  plan.  Man  is  more  like  a  gorilla  than  a 
gorilla  is  like  a  lemur.  Such  are  a  few,  taken  at  random,  among 
the  multitudes  of  similar  facts  which  modern  research  has  estab- 
lished ;  but  when  the  student  seeks  for  an  explanation  of  them 
from  the  supporters  of  the  received  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of 
species,  the  reply  he  receives  is,  in  substance,  of  oriental  simplic- 
ity and  brevity  —  "Mashallah  !  it  so  pleases  God  !"  There  are 
different  species  on  opposite  sides  of  the  isthmus  of  Panama, 
because  they  were  created  different  on  the  two  sides.  The  Plio- 
cene mammals  are  like  the  existing  ones,  because  such  was  the 
plan  of  creation ;  and  we  find  rudimental  organs  and  similarity 
of  plan,  because  it  has  pleased  the  Creator  to  set  before  himself 
a  "divine  exemplar  or  archetype,"  and  to  copy  it  in  his  works; 
and  somewhat  ill,  those  who  hold  this  view  imply,  in  some  of 
them.  That  such  verbal  hocus-pocus  should  be  received  as 
science  will  one  day  be  regarded  as  evidence  of  the  low  state  of 
intelligence  in  the  nineteenth  century,  just  as  we  amuse  ourselves 
with  the  phraseology  about  Nature's  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum, 
wherewith  Torricelli's  compatriots  were  satisfied  to  explain  the 

1  Recent  investigations  tend  to  show  that  this  statement  is  not  strictly 
accurate  (1870). 


226  THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 

rise  of  water  in  a  pump.  And  be  it  recollected  that  this  sort  of 
satisfaction  works  not  only  negative,  but  positive  ill,  by  dis- 
couraging inquiry,  and  so  depriving  man  of  the  usufruct  of  one 
of  the  most  fertile  fields  of  his  great  patrimony,  Nature. 

The  objections  to  the  doctrine  of  origin  of  species  by  special 
creation  which  have  been  detailed  must  have  occurred  with  more 
or  less  force  to  the  mind  of  every  one  who  has  seriously  and  inde- 
pendently considered  the  subject.  It  is  therefore  no  wonder 
that,  from  time  to  time,  this  hypothesis  should  have  been  met  by 
counter  hypotheses,  all  as  well,  and  some  better,  founded  than 
itself ;  and  it  is  curious  to  remark  that  the  inventors  of  the  op- 
posing views  seem  to  have  been  led  into  them  as  much  by  their 
knowledge  of  geology  as  by  their  acquaintance  with  biology.  In 
fact,  when  the  mind  has  once  admitted  the  conception  of  the 
gradual  production  of  the  present  physical  state  of  our  globe, 
by  natural  causes  operating  through  long  ages  of  time,  it  will  be 
Uttle  disposed  to  allow  that  living  beings  have  made  their  appear- 
ance in  another  way,  and  the  speculations  of  De  Maillet  and  his 
successors  are  the  natural  complement  of  Scilla's  demonstration 
of  the  true  nature  of  fossils. 

A  contemporary  of  Newton  and  of  Leibnitz,  sharing,  therefore, 
in  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  remarkable  age  which  witnessed 
the  birth  of  modern  physical  science,  Benoit  De  Maillet  spent  a 
long  life  as  a  consular  agent  of  the  French  government  in  various 
Mediterranean  ports.  For  sLxteen  years,  in  fact ,  he  held  the  ofl&ce 
of  Consul- General  in  Egypt,  and  the  wonderful  phenomena  offered 
by  the  valley  of  the  Nile  appear  to  have  strongly  impressed  his 
mind,  to  have  directed  his  attention  to  all  facts  of  a  similar  order 
which  came  within  his  observation,  and  to  have  led  him  to  specu- 
late on  the  origin  of  the  present  condition  of  our  globe  and  of  its 
inhabitants.  But,  with  all  his  ardor  for  science,  De  Maillet 
seems  to  have  hesitated  to  publish  views  which,  notwithstanding 
the  ingenious  attempts  to  reconcile  them  with  the  Hebrew 
hypothesis  contained  in  the  preface  to  Telliamed  (and  which 
we  recommend  for  Mr.  MacCausland's  perusal),  were  hardly 
likely  to  be  received  with  favor  by  his  contemporaries. 


DARWIN  ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  227 

V 

But  a  short  time  had  elapsed  since  more  than  one  of  the  great 
anatomists  and  physicists  of  the  Itah'an  school  had  paid  dearly 
for  their  endeavors  to  dissipate  some  of  the  prevalent  errors; 
and  their  illustrious  pupil,  Harvey,  the  founder  of  modern  physiol- 
ogy, had  not  fared  so  well,  in  a  country  less  oppressed  by  the 
benumbing  influences  of  theology,  as  to  tempt  any  man  to  follow 
his  example.  Probably  not  uninfluenced  by  these  considerations, 
his  Catholic  majesty's  Consul- General  for  Egypt  kept  his  theo- 
ries to  himself  throughout  a  long  life,  for  Telliamed,  the  only 
scientific  work  which  is  known  to  have  proceeded  from  his  pen, 
was  not  printed  till  1735,  when  its  author  had  reached  the  ripe 
age  of  seventy-nine;  and  though  De  Maillet  lived  three  years 
longer,  his  book  was  not  given  to  the  world  before  1748.  Even 
then  it  was  anonymous  to  those  who  were  not  in  the  secret  of  the 
anagrammatic  character  of  its  title,  and  the  preface  and  dedica- 
tion are  so  worded  as,  in  case  of  necessity,  to  give  the  printer  a 
fair  chance  of  falUng  back  on  the  excuse  that  the  work  was  in- 
tended for  a  mere  jeu  d'esprit} 

The  speculations  of  the  supposititious  Indian  sage,  though  quite 
as  sound  as  those  of  many  a  "Mosaic  Geology"  which  sells 
exceedingly  well,  have  no  great  value  if  we  consider  them  by  the 
light  of  modern  science.  The  waters  are  supposed  to  have 
originally  covered  the  whole  globe ;  to  have  deposited  the 
rocky  masses  which  compose  its  mountains  by  processes  com- 
parable to  those  which  are  now  forming  mud,  sand,  and  shingle ; 
and  then  to  have  gradually  lowered  their  level,  leaving  the  spoils 
of  the  animal  and  vegetable  inhabitants  embedded  in  the  strata. 
As  the  dry  land  appeared,  certain  of  the  aquatic  animals  are 
supposed  to  have  taken  to  it,  and  to  have  become  gradually 
adapted  to  terrestrial  and  aerial  modes  of  existence.  But  if  we 
regard  the  general  tenor  and  style  of  the  reasoning  in  relation 
to  the  state  of  knowledge  of  the  day,  two  circumstances  appear 
very  well  worthy  of  remark.  The  first,  that  De  Maillet  had  a 
notion  of  the  modifiability  of  living  forms  (though  without  any 
precise  information  on    the  subject),  and  how    such    modifia- 

'  Play  of  fancy.  —  Editors. 


228  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

bility  might  account  for  the  origin  of  species ;  the  second,  that 
he  very  clearly  apprehended  the  great  modern  geological  doctrine, 
so  strongly  insisted  upon  by  Hutton,  and  so  ably  and  comprehen- 
sively expounded  by  Lyell,  that  we  must  look  to  existing  causes 
for  the  explanation  of  past  geological  events.  Indeed  the 
following  passage  of  the  preface  in  which  De  Maillet  is  supposed 
to  speak  of  the  Indian  philosopher  Telliamed,  his  alter  ego,^  might 
have  been  written  by  the  most  philosophical  uniformitarian  of 
the  present  day. 

"  Ce  qu'il  y  a  d'etonnant,  est  que  pour  arriver  a  ces  connois- 
sances  il  semble  avoir  perverti  I'ordre  naturel,  puisqu'au  lieu  de 
s'attacher  d'abord  a  rechercher  I'origine  de  notre  globe  il  a 
commence  par  travailler  a  s'instruire  de  la  nature.  Mais  a 
I'entendre,  ce  renversement  de  I'ordre  a  ete  pour  lui  I'effet  d'un 
genie  favorable  qui  I'a  conduit  pas  a  pas  et  comme  par  la  main 
aux  decouvertes  les  plus  sublimes.  C'est  en  decomposant  la 
substance  de  ce  globe  par  une  anatomic  exacte  de  toutes  ses 
parties  qu'il  a  premierement  appris  de  quelles  matieres  il  etait 
compose  et  quels  arrangemens  ces  memes  matieres  observaient 
entre  elles.  Ces  lumieres  jointes  a  1 'esprit  de  comparaison  tou- 
jours  necessaire  a  quiconque  entreprend  de  percer  les  voiles  dont 
la  nature  aime  a  se  cacher,  ont  servi  de  guide  a  notre  philosophe 
pour  parvenir  a  des  connoissances  plus  interessantes.  Par  la 
matiere  et  I'arrangement  de  ces  compositions  il  pretend  avoir 
reconnu  quelle  est  la  veritable  origine  de  ce  globe  que  nous 
habitons,  comment  et  par  qui  il  a  ete  forme."  —  (Pp.  xix,  xx.)^ 

1  Other  self.  —  Editors. 

2  What  is  specially  remarkable  is  that  to  reach  these  conclusions  he  seems 
to  have  perverted  the  natural  order  of  reasoning ;  for  instead  of  undertak- 
ing from  the  beginning  to  investigate  the  origin  of  our  world,  he  has  begun 
by  studying  nature.  But,  if  we  accept  his  word,  this  reversal  of  the  natural 
order  has  been  for  him  like  a  friendly  spirit,  which  has  led  him  by  the  hand, 
Step  by  step,  to  the  most  sublime  discoveries.  It  is  by  an  analysis  of  the 
actual  substance  of  this  globe,  by  means  of  an  exact  classification  of  all  its 
parts,  that  he  has,  in  the  first  place,  learned  of  what  materials  it  was  com- 
posed and  what  relations  these  materials  bore  to  each  other.  This  knowl- 
edge, combined  with  the  spirit  of  comparison  always  necessary  to  whoever 


DARWIN  ON   THE   ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES  229 

But  De  Maillet  was  before  his  age,  and  as  could  hardly  fail  to 
happen  to  one  who  speculated  on  a  zoological  and  botanical 
question  before  Linnaeus,  and  on  a  physiological  problem  before 
Haller,  he  fell  into  great  errors  here  and  there ;  and  hence,  per- 
haps, the  general  neglect  of  his  work.  Robinet's  speculations 
are  rather  behind  than  in  advance  of  those  of  De  Maillet,  and 
though  Linnaeus  may  have  played  with  the  hypothesis  of  trans- 
mutation, it  obtained  no  serious  support  until  Lamarck  adopted 
it,  and  advocated  it  with  great  ability  in  his  Philosophie  Zoolo- 
gique. 

Impelled  towards  the  hypothesis  of  the  transmutation  of 
species,  partly  by  his  general  cosmological  and  geological  views ; 
partly  by  the  conception  of  a  graduated,  though  irregularly 
branching  scale  of  being,  which  had  arisen  out  of  his  profound 
•study  of  plants  and  of  the  lower  forms  of  animal  life,  Lamarck, 
whose  general  line  of  thought  often  closely  resembles  that  of  De 
Maillet,  made  a  great  advance  upon  the  crude  and  merely  specu- 
lative manner  in  which  that  writer  deals  with  the  question  of  the 
origin  of  living  beings,  by  endeavoring  to  find  physical  causes 
competent  to  effect  that  change  of  one  species  into  another 
which  De  Maillet  had  only  supposed  to  occur.  And  Lamarck 
conceived  that  he  had  found  in  nature  such  causes,  amply  suffi- 
cient for  the  purpose  in  view.  It  is  a  physiological  fact,  he  says, 
that  organs  are  increased  in  size  by  action,  atrophied  by  inaction ; 
it  is  another  physiological  fact  that  modifications  produced  are 
transmissible  to  offspring.  Change  the  actions  of  an  animal, 
therefore,  and  you  will  change  its  structure,  by  increasing  the 
development  of  the  parts  newly  brought  into  use  and  by  the 
diminution  of  those  less  used;  but  by  altering  the  circum- 
stances which  surround  it  you  will  alter  its  actions,  and  hence,  in 
the  long  run,  change  of  circumstance  must  produce  change  of 

endeavors  to  pierce  the  veils  behind  which  Nature  loves  to  conceal  herself, 
has  served  our  philosopher  as  a  means  of  coming  at  more  wonderful  truths. 
Through  the  materials  and  the  arrangement  of  these  constituents  he  believes 
he  has  discovered  the  real  origin  of  this  world  which  we  live  in,  how  and  by 
whom  it  was  made.  —  Editors^ 


\. 


230  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

# 

organization.     All   the   species   of   animals,   therefore,   are   in 

Lamarck's  view  the  result  of  the  indirect  action  of  changes  of 
circumstance  upon  those  primitive  germs  which  he  considered 
to  have  originally  arisen,  by  spontaneous  generation,  within  the 
waters  of  the  globe.  It  is  curious,  however,  that  Lamarck  should 
insist  so  strongly  ^  as  he  has  done,  that  circumstances  never  in 
any  degree  directly  modify  the  form  or  the  organization  of  ani- 
mals, but  only  operate  by  changing  their  wants,  and  consequently 
their  actions ;  for  he  thereby  brings  upon  himself  the  obvious 
question,  how,  then,  do  plants,  which  cannot  be  said  to  have 
wants  or  actions,  become  modified?  To  this  he  replies,  that 
they  are  modified  by  the  changes  in  their  nutritive  processes, 
which  are  effected  by  changing  circumstances ;  and  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  occurred  to  him  that  such  changes  might  be  as  well 
supposed  to  take  place  among  animals. 

When  we  have  said  that  Lamarck  felt  that  mere  speculation 
was  not  the  way  to  arrive  at  the  origin  of  species,  but  that  it  was 
necessary,  in  order  to  the  establishment  of  any  sound  theory  on 
the  subject,  to  discover,  by  observation  or  otherwise,  some  vera 
causa,  competent  to  give  rise  to  them  ;  that  he  affirmed  the  true 
order  of  classification  to  coincide  with  the  order  of  their  develop- 
ment one  from  another ;  that  he  insisted  on  the  necessity  of 
allowing  sufficient  time,  very  strongly ;  and  that  all  the  varieties 
of  instinct  and  reason  were  traced  back  by  him  to  the  same  cause 
as  that  which  has  given  rise  to  species,  we  have  enumerated 
his  chief  contributions  to  the  advance  of  the  question.  On  the 
other  hand,  from  his  ignorance  of  any  power  in  nature  competent 
to  modify  the  structure  of  animals,  except  the  development  of 
parts,  or  atrophy  of  them,  in  consequence  of  a  change  of  needs, 
Lamarck  was  led  to  attach  infinitely  greater  weight  than  it 
deserves  to  this  agency,  and  the  absurdities  into  which  he  was 
led  have  met  with  deserved  condemnation.  Of  the  struggle 
for  existence,  on  which  as  we  shall  see  Mr.  Darwin  lays  such 
great  stress,  he  had  no  conception ;  indeed,  he  doubts  whether 
there  really  are  such  things  as  extinct  species,  unless  they  be  such 
1  See  Philosophic  Zoologiqiie,  vol.  i,  p.  222,  et  seq. 


DARWIN  ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  231 

large  animals  as  may  have  met  their  death  at  the  hands  of  man ; 
and  so  little  does  he  dream  of  there  being  any  other  destructive 
causes  at  work,  that,  in  discussing  the  possible  existence  of  fossil 
shells,  he  asks,  "Pourquoi  d'ailleurs  seroient-ils  perdues  des 
que  I'homme  n'a  pu  operer  leur  destruction  ?"  ^  Of  the  in- 
fluence of  selection  Lamarck  has  as  little  notion,  and  he  makes 
no  use  of  the  wonderful  phenomena  which  are  exhibited  by 
domesticated  animals,  and  illustrate  its  powers.  The  vast  in- 
fluence of  Cuvier  was  employed  against  the  Lamarckian  views, 
and  as  the  untenability  of  some  of  his  conclusions  was  easily 
shown,  his  doctrines  sank  under  the  opprobrium  of  scientific  as 
well  as  of  theological  heterodoxy.  Nor  have  the  efforts  made 
of  late  years  to  revive  them  tended  to  reestablish  their  credit  in 
the  minds  of  sound  thinkers  acquainted  with  the  facts  of  the 
case;  indeed  it  may  be  doubted  whether  Lamarck  has  not 
suffered  more  from  his  friends  than  from  his  foes. 

Two  years  ago,  in  fact,  though  we  venture  to  question  if  even 
the  strongest  supporters  of  the  special  creation  hypothesis  had 
not,  now  and  then,  an  uneasy  consciousness  that  all  was  not 
right,  their  position  seemed  more  impregnable  than  ever,  if  not 
by  its  own  inherent  strength,  at  any  rate  by  the  obvious  failure 
of  all  the  attempts  which  had  been  made  to  carry  it.  On  the 
other  hand,  however  much  the  few,  who  thought  deeply  on  the 
question  of  species,  might  be  repelled  by  the  generally  received 
dogmas,  they  saw  no  way  of  escaping  from  them,  save  by  the 
adoption  of  suppositions,  so  little  justified  by  experiment  or  by 
observation,  as  to  be  at  least  equally  distasteful. 

The  choice  lay  between  two  absurdities  and  a  middle  condition 
of  uneasy  skepticism ;  which  last,  however  unpleasant  and  un- 
satisfactory, was  obviously  the  only  justifiable  state  of  mind 
under  the  circumstances. 

Such  being  the  general  ferment  in  the  minds  of  naturalists,  it 
is  no  wonder  that  they  mustered  strong  in  the  rooms  of  the 
Linnaean  Society,  on  the  first  of  July  of  the  year  1858,  to  hear 

1  How  could  they  have  been  destroyed,  since  man  has  not  been  able  to 
effect  their  destruction?  —  Editors.     {Philosophie  Zoologique,  vol  i,  p.  77.) 


232  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

two  papers  by  authors  living  on  opposite  sides  of  the  globe,  work- 
ing out  their  results  independently,  and  yet  professing  to  have 
discovered  one  and  the  same  solution  of  all  the  problems  con- 
nected with  species.  The  one  of  these  authors  was  an  able 
naturalist,  Mr.  Wallace,  who  had  been  employed  for  some  years 
in  studying  the  productions  of  the  islands  of  the  Indian  Archi- 
pelago, and  who  had  forwarded  a  memoir  embodying  his  views 
to  Mr.  Darwin,  for  communication  to  the  Linnaean  Society.  On 
perusing  the  essay,  Mr.  Darwin  was  not  a  little  surprised  to  find 
that  it  embodied  some  of  the  leading  ideas  of  a  great  work  which 
he  had  been  preparing  for  twenty  years,  and  parts  of  which, 
containing  a  development  of  the  very  same  views,  had  been 
perused  by  his  private  friends  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  before. 
Perplexed  in  what  manner  to  do  full  justice  both  to  his  friend 
and  to  himself,  Mr.  Darwin  placed  the  matter  in  the  hands  of 
Dr.  Hooker  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  by  whose  advice  he  communi- 
cated a  brief  abstract  of  his  own  views  to  the  Linnaean  Society, 
at  the  same  time  that  Mr.  Wallace's  paper  was  read.  Of  that 
abstract,  the  work  on  the  Origin  of  Species  is  an  enlargement, 
but  a  complete  statement  of  Mr.  Darwin's  doctrine  is  looked  for 
in  the  large  and  well-illustrated  work  which  he  is  said  to  be  pre- 
paring for  publication. 

The  Darwinian  hypothesis  has  the  merit  of  being  eminently 
simple  and  comprehensible  in  principle,  and  its  essential  positions 
may  be  stated  in  a  very  few  words :  all  species  have  been  pro- 
duced by  the  development  of  varieties  from  common  stocks,  by 
the  conversion  of  these,  first  into  permanent  races  and  then  into 
new  species,  by  the  process  of  natural  selection,  which  process  is 
essentially  identical  with  that  artificial  selection  by  which  man 
has  originated  the  races  of  domestic  animals  —  the  struggle  for 
existence  taking  the  place  of  man,  and  exerting,  in  the  case  of 
natural  selection,  that  selective  action  which  he  performs  in 
artificial  selection. 

The  evidence  brought  forward  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  support  of 
his  hypothesis  is  of  three  kinds.     First,  he  endeavors  to  prove 


DARWIN   ON   THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  233 

that  species  may  be  originated  by  selection ;  secondly,  he  at- 
tempts to  show  that  natural  causes  are  competent  to  exert 
selection ;  and  thirdly,  he  tries  to  prove  that  the  most  remarkable 
and  apparently  anomalous  phenomena  exhibited  by  the  distri- 
bution, development,  and  mutual  relations  of  species,  can  be 
shown  to  be  deducible  from  the  general  doctrine  of  their  origin, 
which  he  propounds,  combined  with  the  known  facts  of  geologi- 
cal change ;  and  that,  even  if  all  these  phenomena  are  not  at 
present  explicable  by  it,  none  are  necessarily  inconsistent  with  it. 
There  cannot  be  a  doubt  that  the  method  of  inquiry  which 
Mr.  Darwin  has  adopted  is  not  only  rigorously  in  accordance 
with  the  canons  of  scientific  logic,  but  that  it  is  the  only  adequate 
method.  Critics  exclusively  trained  in  classics  or  in  mathe- 
matics, who  have  never  determined  a  scientific  fact  in  their  lives 
by  induction  from  experiment  or  observation,  prate  learnedly 
about  Mr.  Darwin's  method,  which  is  not  inductive  enough,  not 
Baconian  enough,  forsooth,  for  them.  But  even  if  practical 
acquaintance  with  the  process  of  scientific  investigation  is  denied 
them,  they  may  learn,  by  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Mill's  admirable 
chapter  ''On  the  Deductive  Method,"  that  there  are  multitudes 
of  scientific  inquiries,  in  which  the  method  of  pure  induction 
helps  the  investigator  but  a  very  little  way. 

"The  mode  of  investigation,"  says  Mr.  Mill,  "which,  from  the 
proved  inapplicability  of  direct  methods  of  observation  and 
experiment,  remains  to  us  as  the  main  source  of  the  knowledge  we 
possess,  or  can  acquire,  respecting  the  conditions  and  laws  of 
recurrence  of  the  more  complex  phenomena,  is  called,  in  its  most 
general  expression,  the  deductive  method,  and  consists  of  three 
operations :  the  first,  one  of  direct  induction ;  the  second,  of 
ratiocination ;  and  the  third,  of  verification." 

Now,  the  conditions  which  have  determined  the  existence  of 
species  are  not  only  exceedingly  complex,  but,  so  far  as  the  great 
majority  of  them  are  concerned,  are  necessarily  beyond  our 
cognizance.     But  what  Mr.  Darwin  has  attempted  to  do  is  in 


234  THOMAS   HENRY   HUXLEY 

exact  accordance  with  the  rule  laid  down  by  Mr.  Mill ;  he  has 
endeavored  to  determine  certain  great  facts  inductively,  by  ob- 
servation and  experiment ;  he  has  then  reasoned  from  the  data 
thus  furnished ;  and  lastly,  he  has  tested  the  validity  of  his  rati- 
ocination by  comparing  his  deductions  with  the  observed  facts 
of  nature.  Inductively,  Mr.  Darwin  endeavors  to  prove  that 
species  arise  in  a  given  way.  Deductively,  he  desires  to  show 
that,  if  they  arise  in  that  way,  the  facts  of  distribution,  develop- 
ment, classification,  etc.,  maybe  accounted  for,  i.e.,  may  be  de- 
duced from  their  mode  of  origin,  combined  with  admitted 
changes  in  physical  geography  and  climate,  during  an  indefinite 
period.  And  this  explanation,  or  coincidence  of  observed  with 
deduced  facts,  is,  so  far  as  it  extends,  a  verification  of  the 
Darwinian  view. 

There  is  no  fault  to  be  found  with  Mr.  Darwin's  method,  then ; 
but  it  is  another  question  whether  he  has  fulfilled  all  the  condi- 
tions imposed  by  that  method.  Is  it  satisfactorily  proved,  in 
fact,  that  species  may  be  originated  by  selection  ?  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  natural  selection  ?  that  none  of  the  phenomena 
exhibited  by  species  are  inconsistent  with  the  origin  of  species 
in  this  way  ?  If  these  questions  can  be  answered  in  the  affirma- 
tive, Mr.  Darwin's  view  steps  out  of  the  ranks  of  hypotheses  into 
those  of  proved  theories ;  but  so  long  as  the  evidence  at  present 
adduced  falls  short  of  enforcing  that  affirmation,  so  long,  to  our 
minds,  must  the  new  doctrine  be  content  to  remain  among  the 
former  —  an  extremely  valuable,  and  in  the  highest  degree  prob- 
able, doctrine,  indeed  the  only  extant  hypothesis  which  is  worth 
anything  in  a  scientific  point  of  view ;  but  still  a  hypothesis,  and 
not  yet  the  theory  of  species. 

After  much  consideration,  and  with  assuredly  no  bias  against 
Mr.  Darwin's  views,  it  is  our  clear  conviction  that,  as  the  evidence 
stands,  it  is  not  absolutely  proven  that  a  group  of  animals,  having 
all  the  characters  exhibited  by  species  in  nature,  has  ever  been 
originated  by  selection,  whether  artificial  or  natural.  Groups 
having  the  morphological  character  of  species,  distinct  and  per- 
manent races  in  fact,  have  been  so  produced  over  and  over  again  ; 


DARWIN  ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES  235 

but  there  is  no  positive  evidence  at  present  that  any  group  of 
animals  has,  by  variation  and  selective  breeding,  given  rise  to 
another  group  which  was  even  in  the  least  degree  infertile  with 
the  first.  Mr.  Darwin  is  perfectly  aware  of  this  weak  point,  and 
brings  forward  a  multitude  of  ingenious  and  important  arguments 
to  diminish  the  force  of  the  objection.  We  admit  the  value  of 
these  arguments  to  their  fullest  extent;  nay,  we  will  go  so  far 
as  to  express  our  belief  that  experiments,  conducted  by  a  skillful 
physiologist,  would  very  probably  obtain  the  desired  production 
of  mutually  more  or  less  infertile  breeds  from  a  common  stock, 
in  a  comparatively  few  years ;  but  still,  as  the  case  stands  at  pres- 
ent, this  "little  rift  within  the  lute"  is  not  to  be  disguised  nor 
overlooked. 

In  the  remainder  of  Mr.  Darwin's  argument  our  own  private 
ingenuity  has  not  hitherto  enabled  us  to  pick  holes  of  any  great 
importance ;  and  judging  by  what  we  hear  and  read,  other 
adventurers  in  the  same  field  do  not  seem  to  have  been  much 
more  fortunate.  It  has  been  urged,  for  instance,  that  in  his 
chapters  on  the  struggle  for  existence  and  on  natural  selection, 
Mr.  Darwin  does  not  so  much  prove  that  natural  selection  does 
occur,  as  that  it  must  occur ;  but,  in  fact,  no  other  sort  of  demon- 
stration is  attainable.  A  race  does  not  attract  our  attention  in 
nature  until  it  has,  in  all  probability,  existed  for  a  considerable 
time,  and  then  it  is  too  late  to  inquire  into  the  conditions  of  its 
origin.  Again,  it  is  said  that  there  is  no  real  analogy  between  the 
selection  which  takes  place  under  domestication,  by  human  in- 
fluence, and  any  operation  which  can  be  effected  by  nature,  for 
man  interferes  intelligently.  Reduced  to  its  elements,  this 
argument  implies  that  an  effect  produced  with  trouble  by  an 
intelligent  agent  must,  a  fortiori,'^  be  more  troublesome,  if  not  im- 
possible, to  an  unintelligent  agent.  Even  putting  aside  the 
question  whether  nature,  acting  as  she  does  according  to  definite 
and  invariable  laws,  can  be  rightly  called  an  unintelligent  agent, 
such  a  position  as  this  is  wholly  untenable.  Mix  salt  and  sand, 
and  it  shall  puzzle  the  wisest  of  men  with  his  mere  natural  appli- 

1  All  the  more.  — Editors. 


236  THOMAS   HENRY  HUXLEY 

ances  to  separate  all  the  grains  of  sand  from  all  the  grains  of 
salt ;  but  a  shower  of  rain  will  effect  the  same  object  in  ten  min- 
utes. And  so  while  man  may  find  it  tax  all  his  intelligence  to 
separate  any  variety  which  arises,  and  to  breed  selectively  from 
it,  the  destructive  agencies  incessantly  at  work  in  nature,  if 
they  find  one  variety  to  be  more  soluble  in  circumstances  than 
the  other,  will  inevitably  in  the  long  run  eliminate  it. 

A  frequent  and  a  just  objection  to  the  Lamarckian  hypothesis 
of  the  transmutation  of  species  is  based  upon  the  absence  of 
transitional  forms  between  many  species.  But  against  the 
Darwinian  hypothesis  this  argument  has  no  force.  Indeed,  one 
of  the  most  valuable  and  suggestive  parts  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
work  is  that  in  which  he  proves  that  the  frequent  absence  of 
transitions  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  his  doctrine,  and  that 
the  stock  whence  two  or  more  species  have  sprung,  need  in  no 
respect  be  intermediate  between  these  species.  If  any  two 
species  have  arisen  from  a  common  stock  in  the  same  way  as  the 
carrier  and  the  pouter,  say,  have  arisen  from  the  rock  pigeon, 
then  the  common  stock  of  these  two  species  need  be  no  more 
intermediate  between  the  two  than  the  rock  pigeon  is  between 
the  carrier  and  pouter.  Clearly  appreciate  the  force  of  this 
analogy,  and  all  the  arguments  against  the  origin  of  species  by 
selection,  based  on  the  absence  of  transitional  forms,  faU  to  the 
ground.  And  Mr.  Darwin's  position  might,  we  think,  have 
been  even  stronger  than  it  is  if  he  had  not  embarrassed  himself 
with  the  aphorism,  "Natura  non  facit  saltumj"  ^  which  turns  up  so 
often  in  his  pages.  We  believe,  as  we  have  said  above,  that 
nature  does  make  jumps  now  and  then,  and  a  recognition  of  the 
fact  is  of  no  small  importance  in  disposing  of  many  minor  ob- 
jections to  the  doctrine  of  transmutation. 

But  we  must  pause.  The  discussion  of  Mr.  Darwin's  argu- 
ments in  detail  would  lead  us  far  beyond  the  limits  within  which 
we  proposed,  at  starting,  to  confine  this  article.  Our  object 
has  been  attained  if  we  have  given  an  intelligible,  however  brief, 
account  of  the  established  facts  connected  with  species,  and  of 
^  Nature  does  not  advance  in  leaps.  —  Editors. 


DARWIN  ON   THE   ORIGIN  OF   SPECIES 


237 


the  relation  of  the  explanation  of  those  facts  offered  by  Mr.  Dar- 
win to  the  theoretical  views  held  by  his  predecessors  and  his  con- 
temporaries, and,  above  all,  to  the  requirements  of  scientific  logic. 
We  have  ventured  to  point  out  that  it  does  not,  as  yet,  satisfy 
all  those  requirements ;  but  we  do  not  hesitate  to  assert  that  it  is 
as  superior  to  any  preceding  or  contemporary  hypothesis,  in  the 
extent  of  observational  and  experimental  basis  on  which  it  rests, 
in  its  rigorously  scientific  method,  and  in  its  power  of  explaining 
biological  phenomena,  as  was  the  hypothesis  of  Copernicus  to  the 
speculations  of  Ptolemy.  But  the  planetary  orbits  turned  out 
to  be  not  quite  circular  after  all,  and  grand  as  was  the  service 
Copernicus  rendered  to  science,  Kepler  and  Newton  had  to  come 
after  him.  What  if  the  orbit  of  Darwinism  should  be  a  little 
too  circular  ?  What  if  species  should  offer  residual  phenomena, 
here  and  there,  not  explicable  by  natural  selection?  Twenty 
years  hence  naturalists  may  be  in  a  position  to  say  whether  this 
is,  or  is  not,  the  case;  but  in  either  event  they  will  owe  the 
author  of  The  Origin  of  Species  an  immense  debt  of  gratitude. 
We  should  leave  a  very  wrong  impression  on  the  reader's  mind  if 
we  permitted  him  to  suppose  that  the  value  of  that  work  depends 
wholly  on  the  ultimate  justification  of  the  theoretical  views  which 
it  contains.  On  the  contrary,  if  they  were  disproved  to-morrow, 
the  book  would  still  be  the  best  of  its  kind  —  the  most  compen- 
dious statement  of  well-sifted  facts  bearing  on  the  doctrine  of 
species  that  has  ever  appeared.  The  chapters  on  Variation,  on 
the  Struggle  for  Existence,  on  Instinct,  on  Hybridism,  on  the 
Imperfection  of  the  Geological  Record,  on  Geographical  Distribu- 
tion, have  not  only  no  equals,  but,  so  far  as  our  knowledge  goes, 
no  competitors,  within  the  range  of  biological  Uterature.  And 
viewed  as  a  whole,  we  do  not  believe  that,  since  the  publication  of 
von  Baer's  Researches  on  Development,  thirty  years  ago,  any 
work  has  appeared  calculated  to  exert  so  large  an  influence,  not 
only  on  the  future  of  Biology,  but  in  extending  the  domination  of 
Science  over  regions  of  thought  into  which  she  has,  as  yet,  hardly 
penetrated. 


IX 

DARWINISM    AS   APPLIED   TO    MAN 
Alfred  Russel  Wallace 

[Alfred  Russel  Wallace  (1823-),  distinguished  as  a  scientist  and  as  joint 
proponent,  with  Darwin,  of  the  theory  of  evolution,  became  interested  in 
natural  science  at  about  his  twentieth  year.  As  early  as  1847  his  ideas  were 
directed  to  the  study  of  species,  and  especially  of  the  causes  of  their  ori- 
gin. Under  an  impulse  provided  in  part  by  Darwin's  Journal,  he  decided  to 
make  natural  history  collections  in  the  region  of  the  Amazon,  and  later  in  the 
Malayan  Archipelago.  Continuing  here  his  investigations  of  the  phenomena 
of  species,  he  entered  into  correspondence  with  Darwin,  to  whom  in  1858  he 
communicated  his  independent  discovery  of  what  are  now  known  as  the 
laws  of  selection  and  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  Darwin  himself,  how- 
ever, had  formulated  the  same  laws  twenty  years  before,  but  had  occupied 
himself  in  the  meanwhile  by  gathering  biological  and  geological  evidence  in 
support  of  his  conclusions,  in  order  to  publish  them  not  as  an  unsupported 
theory,  but  as  substantially  a  scientific  certainty.  The  results  of  the  sepa- 
rate investigations  of  the  two  scholars  were  presented  simultaneously  to  the 
Linnaean  Society  in  1858;  but  in  the  following  year  Darwin's  Origin  of 
Species,  which  presented  an  overwhelming  mass  of  scientific  evidence  in 
support  of  the  idea,  permanently  associated  Darwin's  name  with  the  theory. 
Wallace's  attitude  toward  the  question  of  credit  for  the  discovery  of  this 
theory  was  throughout  one  of  admirable  modesty. 

Darwinism  Applied  to  Man,  which  is  the  concluding  chapter  of  the  volume 
Darwinism,  published  in  1889,  is  a  sound  and  interesting  review  of  the  ap- 
plication of  the  law  of  evolution  to  mankind,  and  in  addition  something  of  a 
history  of  his  civilization.  Wallace's  view  of  man's  place  in  nature,  it  must 
be  mentioned,  was  largely  determined  by  a  religious  habit  of  mind.  For 
this  reason  his  interpretation  of  the  most  striking  point  of  specific  dififeren- 
tiation  between  man  and  the  lower  animals,  the  evidences  of  what  he  calls 
a  "higher  nature,"  traces  man's  special  faculties  not  to  inherited  capacities 
but  to  a  distinct  spiritual  gift.  This  view  presents  an  interesting  contrast 
to  Huxley's  opinion  that  man's  special  attainments  have  resulted  from  his 
acquisition,  through  purely  evolutional  forces,  of  the  power  of  articulate 
speech,  whence  his  ability  to  communicate  abstract  ideas.] 

238 


DARWINISM  AS   APPLIED   TO  MAN  239 

Our  review  of  modern  Darwinism  might  fitly  have  terminated 
with  the  preceding  chapter ;  but  the  immense  interest  that  at- 
taches to  the  origin  of  the  human  race,  and  the  amount  of  miscon- 
ception which  prevails  regarding  the  essential  teachings  of  Dar- 
win's theory  on  this  question,  as  well  as  regarding  my  own  special 
views  upon  it,  induce  me  to  devote  a  final  chapter  to  its  discussion. 

To  any  one  who  considers  the  structure  of  man's  body,  even 
in  the  most  superficial  manner,  it  must  be  evident  that  it  is  the 
body  of  an  animal,  differing  greatly,  it  is  true,  from  the  bodies 
of  all  other  animals,  but  agreeing  with  them  in  all  essential  fea- 
tures. The  bony  structure  of  man  classes  him  as  a  vertebrate ; 
the  mode  of  suckling  his  young  classes  him  as  a  mammal ;  his 
blood,  his  muscles,  and  his  nerves,  the  structure  of  his  heart 
with  its  veins  and  arteries,  his  lungs  and  his  whole  respiratory 
and  circulatory  systems,  all  closely  correspond  to  those  of 
other  mammals,  and  are  often  almost  identical  with  them.  He 
possesses  the  same  number  of  limbs  terminating  in  the  same  num- 
ber of  digits  as  belong  fundamentally  to  the  mammalian  class. 
His  senses  are  identical  with  theirs,  and  his  organs  of  sense  are 
the  same  in  number  and  occupy  the  same  relative  position. 
Every  detail  of  structure  which  is  common  to  the  mammalia  as 
a  class  is  found  also  in  man,  while  he  only  differs  from  them  in 
such  ways  and  degrees  as  the  various  species  or  groups  of  mam- 
mals differ  from  each  other.  If,  then,  we  have  good  reason  to 
believe  that  every  existing  group  of  mammalia  has  descended 
from  some  common  ancestral  form  —  as  we  saw  to  be  so  com- 
pletely demonstrated  in  the  case  of  the  horse  tribe,  —  and  that 
each  family,  each  order,  and  even  the  whole  class  must  similarly 
have  descended  from  some  much  more  ancient  and  more  general- 
ized type,  it  would  be  in  the  highest  degree  improbable  —  so 
improbable  as  to  be  almost  inconceivable  —  that  man,  agreeing 
with  them  so  closely  in  every  detail  of  his  structure,  should  have 
had  some  quite  distinct  mode  of  origin.  Let  us,  then,  see  what 
other  evidence  bears  upon  the  question,  and  whether  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  convert  the  probability  of  his  animal  origin  into  a 
practical  certainty. 


240  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

All  the  higher  animals  present  rudiments  of  organs  which, 
though  useless  to  them,  are  useful  in  some  allied  group,  and  are 
believed  to  have  descended  from  a  common  ancestor  in  which 
they  were  useful.  Thus  there  are  in  ruminants  rudiments  of  in- 
cisor teeth  which,  in  some  species,  never  cut  through  the  gums ; 
many  lizards  have  external  rudimentary  legs ;  while  many  birds, 
as  the  Apteryx,  have  quite  rudimentary  wings.  Now  man  pos- 
sesses similar  rudiments,  sometimes  constantly,  sometimes  only 
occasionally  present,  which  serve  intimately  to  connect  his 
bodily  structure  with  that  of  the  lower  animals.  Many  animals, 
for  example,  have  a  special  muscle  for  moving  or  twitching  the 
skin.  In  man  there  are  remnants  of  this  in  certain  parts  of  the 
body,  especially  in  the  forehead,  enabling  us  to  raise  our  eye- 
brows ;  but  some  persons  have  it  in  other  parts.  A  few  persons 
are  able  to  move  the  whole  scalp  so  as  to  throw  off  any  object 
placed  on  the  head,  and  this  property  has  been  proved,  in  one 
case,  to  be  inherited.  In  the  outer  fold  of  the  ear  there  is  some- 
times a  projecting  point,  corresponding  in  position  to  the  pointed 
ear  of  many  animals,  and  believed  to  be  a  rudiment  of  it.  In 
the  alimentary  canal  there  is  a  rudiment  —  the  vermiform  ap- 
pendage of  the  caecum  —  which  is  not  only  useless,  but  is  some- 
times a  cause  of  disease  and  death  in  man ;  yet  in  many  vege- 
table feeding  animals  it  is  very  long,  and  even  in  the  orang-utan 
it  is  of  considerable  length  and  convoluted.  So,  man  possesses 
rudimentary  bones  of  a  tail  concealed  beneath  the  skin,  and,  in 
some  rare  cases,  this  forms  a  minute  external  tail. 

The  variability  of  every  part  of  man's  structure  is  very  great, 
and  many  of  these  variations  tend  to  approximate  towards  the 
structure  of  other  animals.  The  courses  of  the  arteries  are 
eminently  variable,  so  that  for  surgical  purposes  it  has  been 
necessary  to  determine  the  probable  proportion  of  each  varia- 
tion. The  muscles  are  so  variable  that  in  fifty  cases  the  muscles 
of  the  foot  were  found  to  be  not  strictly  alike  in  any  two,  and  in 
some  the  deviations  were  considerable ;  while  in  thirty-six  sub- 
jects Mr.  J.  Wood  observed  no  fewer  than  558  muscular  varia- 
tions.    The  same  author  states  that  in  a  single  male  subject 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED  TO  MAN  241 

there  were  no  fewer  than  seven  muscular  variations,  all  of  which 
plainly  represented  muscles  proper  to  various  kinds  of  apes. 
The  muscles  of  the  hands  and  arms  —  parts  which  are  so  emi- 
nently characteristic  of  man  —  are  extremely  liable  to  vary,  so 
as  to  resemble  the  corresponding  muscles  of  the  lower  animals. 
That  such  variations  are  due  to  reversion  to  a  former  state  of 
existence  Mr.  Darwin  thinks  highly  probable,  and  he  adds  :  "It 
is  quite  incredible  that  a  man  should,  through  mere  accident, 
abnormally  resemble  certain  apes  in  no  less  than  seven  of  his 
muscles,  if  there  had  been  no  genetic  connection  between  them. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  man  is  descended  from  some  apelike 
creature,  no  valid  reason  can  be  assigned  why  certain  muscles 
should  not  suddenly  reappear  after  an  interval  of  many  thou- 
sand generations,  in  the  same  manner  as,  with  horses,  asses,  and 
mules,  dark  colored  stripes  suddenly  reappear  on  the  legs  and 
shoulders,  after  an  interval  of  hundreds,  or  more  probably  of 
thousands,  of  generations."  ^ 

The  progressive  development  of  any  vertebrate  from  the  ovum 
or  minute  embryonic  egg  affords  one  of  the  most  marvelous 
chapters  in  Natural  History.  We  see  the  contents  of  the  ovum 
undergoing  numerous  definite  changes,  its  interior  dividing  and 
subdividing  till  it  consists  of  a  mass  of  cells;  then  a  groove  ap- 
pears marking  out  the  median  line  or  vertebral  column  of  the 
future  animal,  and  thereafter  are  slowly  developed  the  various 
essential  organs  of  the  body.  After  describing  in  some  detail 
what  takes  place  in  the  case  of  the  ovum  of  the  dog,  Professor 
Huxley  continues:  "The  history  of  the  development  of  any 
other  vertebrate  animal,  lizard,  snake,  frog,  or  fish,  tells  the 
same  story.  There  is  always  to  begin  with,  an  egg  having  the 
same  essential  structure  as  that  of  the  dog ;  the  yolk  of  that  egg 
undergoes  division  or  segmentation,  as  it  is  called;  the  ultimate 
products  of  that  segmentation  constitute  the  building  materials 
for  the  body  of  the  young  animal ;  and  this  is  built  up  round  a 
primitive  groove,  in  the  floor  of  which  a  notochord  is  developed- 
^  Descent  of  Man,  pp.  41-43 ;   also  pp.  13-15. 


242  ALFRED  RUSSEL  WALLACE 

Furthermore,  there  is  a  period  in  which  the  young  of  all  these 
animals  resemble  one  another,  not  merely  in  outward  form,  but 
in  all  essentials  of  structure,  so  closely  that  the  differences 
between  them  are  inconsiderable,  while  in  their  subsequent 
course  they  diverge  more  and  more  widely  from  one  another. 
And  it  is  a  general  law  that  the  more  closely  any  animals  re- 
semble one  another  in  adult  structure,  the  longer  and  the  more 
intimately  do  their  embryos  resemble  one  another ;  so  that,  for 
example,  the  embryos  of  a  snake  and  of  a  lizard  remain  like 
one  another  longer  than  do  those  of  a  snake  and  a  bird ;  and  the 
embryos  of  a  dog  and  of  a  cat  remain  like  one  another  for  a  far 
longer  period  than  do  those  of  a  dog  and  a  bird,  or  of  a  dog 
and  an  opossum,  or  even  than  those  of  a  dog  and  a  monkey."  ^ 
We  thus  see  that  the  study  of  development  affords  a  test  of 
affinity  in  animals  that  are  externally  very  much  unlike  each 
other;  and  we  naturally  ask  how  this  applies  to  man.  Is  he 
developed  in  a  different  way  from  other  mammals,  as  we  should 
certainly  expect  if  he  has  had  a  distinct  and  altogether  different 
origin?  "The  reply,"  says  Professor  Huxley,  "is  not  doubtful 
for  a  moment.  Without  question,  the  mode  of  origin  and  the 
early  stages  of  the  development  of  man  are  identical  with  those 
of  the  animals  imlnediately  below  him  in  the  scale."  And  again 
he  tells  us :  "  It  is  very  long  before  the  body  of  the  young  human 
being  can  be  readily  discriminated  from  that  of  the  young 
puppy ;  but  at  a  tolerably  early  period  the  two  become  distin- 
guishable by  the  different  forms  of  their  adjuncts,  the  yolk-sac 
and  the  allantois;"  and  after  describing  these  differences  he 
continues :  "  But  exactly  in  those  respects  in  which  the  develop- 
ing man  differs  from  the  dog,  he  resembles  the  ape.  ...  So 
that  it  is  only  quite  in  the  later  stages  of  development  that  the 
young  human  being  presents  marked  differences  from  the  young 
ape,  while  the  latter  departs  as  much  from  the  dog  in  its  develop- 
ment as  the  man  does.  Startling  as  this  last  assertion  may  ap- 
pear to  be,  it  is  demonstrably  true,  and  it  alone  appears  to  me 
sufficient  to  place  beyond  all  doubt  the  structural  unity  of  man 
^  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  p.  64. 


DARWINISM  AS   APPLIED   TO   MAN  243 

with  the  rest  of  the  animal  world,  and  more  particularly  and 
closely  with  the  apes."  ^ 

A  few  of  the  curious  details  in  which  man  passes  through 
stages  common  to  the  lower  animals  may  be  mentioned.  At 
one  stage  the  os  coccyx  projects  like  a  true  tail,  extending  con- 
siderably beyond  the  rudimentary  legs.  In  the  seventh  month 
the  convolutions  of  the  brain  resemble  those  of  an  adult  baboon. 
The  great  toe,  so  characteristic  of  man,  forming  the  fulcrum 
which  most  assists  him  in  standing  erect,  in  an  early  stage  of  the 
embryo  is  much  shorter  than  the  other  toes,  and  instead  of 
being  parallel  with  them,  projects  at  an  angle  from  the  side  of 
the  foot,  thus  corresponding  with  its  permanent  condition  in  the 
quadrumana.  Numerous  other  examples  might  be  quoted,  all 
illustrating  the  same  general  law. 

Though  the  fact  is  so  well  known,  it  is  certainly  one  of  pro- 
found significance  that  many  animal  diseases  can  be  communi- 
cated to  man,  since  it  shows  similarity,  if  not  identity,  in  the 
minute  structure  of  the  tissues,  the  nature  of  the  blood,  the 
nerves,  and  the  brain.  Such  diseases  as  hydrophobia,  variola, 
the  glanders,  cholera,  herpes,  etc.,  can  be  transmitted  from  ani- 
mals to  man  or  the  reverse ;  while  monkeys  are  liable  to  many 
of  the  same  noncontagious  diseases  as  we  are.  Rengger,  who 
carefully  observed  the  common  monkey  {Cebus  Azarce)  in  Para- 
guay, found  it  hable  to  catarrh,  with  the  usual  symptoms,  ter- 
minating sometimes  in  consumption.  These  monkeys  also 
suffered  from  apoplexy,  inflammation  of  the  bowels,  and  cataract 
in  the  eye.  Medicines  produced  the  same  effect  upon  them  as 
upon  us.  Many  kinds  of  monkeys  have  a  strong  taste  for  tea, 
coffee,  spirits,  and  even  tobacco.  These  facts  show  the  simi- 
larity of  the  nerves  of  taste  in  monkeys  and  in  ourselves,  and 
that  their  whole  nervous  system  is  affected  in  a  similar  way. 
Even  the  parasites,  both  external  and  internal,  that  affect  man 
are  not  altogether  peculiar  to  him,  but  belong  to  the  same 
families  or  genera  as  those  which  infest  animals,  and  in  one  case, 
1  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  p.  67. 


244  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

scabies,  even  the  same  species. "^  These  curious  facts  seem  quite 
inconsistent  with  the  idea  that  man's  bodily  structure  and  nature 
are  altogether  distinct  from  those  of  animals,  and  have  had  a 
different  origin ;  while  the  facts  are  just  what  we  should  expect 
if  he  has  been  produced  by  descent  with  modification  from  some 
common  ancestor. 

By  universal  consent  we  see  in  the  monkey  tribe  a  caricature 
of  humanity.  Their  faces,  their  hands,  their  actions  and  ex- 
pressions present  ludicrous  resemblances  to  our  own.  But  there 
is  one  group  of  this  great  tribe  in  which  this  resemblance  is 
greatest,  and  they  have  hence  been  called  the  anthropoid  or 
manlike  apes.  These  are  few  in  number,  and  inhabit  only  the 
equatorial  regions  of  Africa  and  Asia,  countries  where  the  climate 
is  most  uniform,  the  forests  densest,  and  the  supply  of  fruit 
abundant  throughout  the  year.  These  animals  are  now  com- 
paratively well  known,  consisting  of  the  orang-utan  of  Borneo 
and  Sumatra,  the  chimpanzee  and  the  gorilla  of  West  Africa, 
and  the  group  of  gibbons  or  long-armed  apes,  consisting  of  many 
species  and  inhabiting  Southeastern  Asia  and  the  larger  Malay 
Islands.  These  last  are  far  less  like  man  than  the  other  three, 
one  or  other  of  which  has  at  various  times  been  claimed  to 
be  the  most  manlike  of  the  apes  and  our  nearest  relations 
in  the  animal  kingdom.  The  question  of  the  degree  of  resem- 
blance of  these  animals  to  ourselves  is  one  of  great  interest, 
leading,  as  it  does,  to  some  important  conclusions  as  to  our 
origin  and  geological  antiquity,  and  we  will  therefore  briefly 
consider  it. 

If  we  compare  the  skeletons  of  the  orang  or  chimpanzee  with 
that  of  man,  we  find  them  to  be  a  kind  of  distorted  copy,  every 
bone  corresponding  (with  very  few  exceptions),  but  altered  some- 
what in  size,  proportions,  and  position.  So  great  is  this  resem- 
blance that  it  led  Professor  Owen  to  remark:  "I  cannot  shut 
my  eyes  to  the  significance  of  that  all-pervading  similitude  of 
structure  —  every  tooth,  every  bone,  strictly  homologous  — 
^  The  Descent  of  Man,  pp.  7,  8. 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO   MAN  245 

which  makes  the  determination  of  the  difference  between  Homo 
and  Pithecus  the  anatomist's  difficulty." 

The  actual  differences  in  the  skeletons  of  these  apes  and  that 
of  man  —  that  is,  differences  dependent  on  the  presence  or  ab- 
sence of  certain  bones,  and  not  on  their  form  or  position  —  have 
been  enumerated  by  Mr.  Mivart  as  follows:  (i)  In  the  breast- 
bone consisting  of  but  two  bones,  man  agrees  with  the  gibbons ; 
the  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  having  this  part  consisting  of  seven 
bones  in  a  single  series,  while  in  the  orang  they  are  arranged  in 
a  double  series  of  ten  bones.  (2)  The  normal*  number  of  the 
ribs  in  the  orang  and  some  gibbons  is  twelve  pairs,  as  in  man, 
while  in  the  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  there  are  thirteen  pairs. 

(3)  The  orang  and  the  gibbons  also  agree  with  man  in  having 
five  lumbar  vertebrae,  while  in  the  gorilla  and  the  chimpanzee 
there  are  but  four,  and  sometimes  only  three.  *  (4)  The  gorilla 
and  chimpanzee  agree  with  man  in  having  eight  small  bones  in 
the  wrist,  while  the  orang  and  the  gibbons,  as  well  as  all  other 
monkeys,  have  nine.^ 

The  differences  in  the  form,  size,  and  attachments  of  the  vari- 
ous bones,  muscles,  and  other  organs  of  these  apes  and  man  are 
very  numerous  and  exceedingly  complex,  sometimes  one  species, 
sometimes  another  agreeing  most  nearly  with  ourselves,  thus 
presenting  a  tangled  web  of  affinities  which  it  is  very  difficult  to 
unravel.  Estimated  by  the  skeleton  alone,  the  chimpanzee  and 
gorilla  seem  nearer  to  man  than  the  orang,  which  last  is  also 
inferior  as  presenting  certain  aberrations  in  the  muscles.  In  the 
form  of  the  ear  the  gorilla  is  more  human  than  any  other  ape, 
while  in  the  tongue  the  orang  is  the  more  manlike.  In  the 
stomach  and  liver  the  gibbons  approach  nearest  to  man ;  then 
come  the  orang  and  chimpanzee,  while  the  gorilla  has  a  de- 
graded liver  more  resembling  that  of  the  lower  monkeys  and 
baboons. 

1  Man  and  Apes.  By  St.  George  Mivart,  F.R.S.,  1873.  It  is  an  interest- 
ing fact  (for  which  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  E.  B.  Poulton)  that  the  human 
embryo  possesses  the  extra  rib  and  wrist  bone  referred  to  above  in  (2)  and 

(4)  as  occurring  in  some  of  the  apes. 


246  ALFRED   RUSSEL   WALLACE 

We  come  now  to  that  part  of  his  organization  in  which  man 
is  so  much  higher  than  all  the  lower  animals  —  the  brain ;  and 
here,  Mr.  Mivart  informs  us,  the  orang  stands  highest  in  rank. 
The  height  of  the  orang's  cerebrum  in  front  is  greater  in  propor- 
tion than  in  either  the  chimpanzee  or  the  gorilla.  "On  compar- 
ing the  brain  of  man  with  the  brains  of  the  orang,  chimpanzee, 
and  baboon,  we  find  a  successive  decrease  in  the  frontal  lobe, 
and  a  successive  and  very  great  increase  in  the  relative  size  of 
the  occipital  lobe.  Concomitantly  with  this  increase  and  de- 
crease, certain  folds  of  brain  substance,  called  '  bridging  convo- 
lutions,' which  in  man  are  conspicuously  interposed  between  the 
parietal  and  occipital  lobes,  seem  as  utterly  to  disappear  in  the 
chimpanzee,  as  they  do  in  the  baboon.  In  the  orang,  however, 
though  much  reduced,  they  are  still  to  be  distinguished.  .  .  . 
The  actual  and*  absolute  mass  of  the  brain  is,  however,  slightly 
greater  in  the  chimpanzee  than  in  the  orang,  as  is  the  relative 
vertical  extent  of  the  middle  part  of  the  cerebrum,  although, 
as  already  stated,  the  frontal  portion  is  higher  in  the  orang; 
while,  according  to  M.  Gratiolet,  the  gorilla  is  not  only  inferior 
to  the  orang  in  cerebral  development,  but  even  to  his  smaller 
African  congener,  the  chimpanzee."  ^ 

On  the  whole,  then,  we  find  that  no  one  of  the  great  apes  can 
be  positively  asserted  to  be  nearest  to  man  in  structure.  Each 
of  them  approaches  him  in  certain  characteristics,  while  in 
others  it  is  widely  removed,  giving  the  idea,  so  consonant  with 
the  theory  of  evolution  as  developed  by  Darwin,  that  all  are 
derived  from  a  common  ancestor,  from  which  the  existing 
anthropoid  apes  as  well  as  man  have  diverged.  When,  how- 
ever, we  turn  from  the  details  of  anatomy  to  peculiarities 
of  external  form  and  motions,  we  find  that  in  a  variety  of 
characters  all  these  apes  resemble  each  other  and  differ  from 
man,  so  that  we  may  fairly  say  that  while  they  have  diverged 
somewhat  from  each  other,  they  have  diverged  much  more 
widely  from  ourselves.  Let  us  briefly  enumerate  some  of  these 
differences. 

1  Man  and  Apes,  pp.  138,  144. 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED  TO  MAN  247 

All  apes  have  large  canine  teeth,  while  in  man  these  are  no 
longer  than  the  adjacent  incisors  or  premolars,  the  whole  form- 
ing a  perfectly  even  series.  In  apes  the  arms  are  proportionately 
much  longer  than  in  man,  while  the  thighs  are  much  shorter. 
No  ape  stands  really  erect,  a  posture  which  is  natural  in  man. 
The  thumb  is  proportionately  larger  in  man,  and  more  perfectly 
opposable  than  in  that  of  any  ape.  The  foot  of  man  differs 
largely  from  that  of  all  apes,  in  the  horizontal  sole,  the  project- 
ing heel,  the  short  toes,  and  the  powerful  great  toe  firmly  at- 
tached parallel  to  the  other  toes ;  all  perfectly  adapted  for  main- 
taining the  erect  posture,  and  for  free  motion  without  any  aid 
from  the  arms  or  hands.  In  apes  the  foot  is  formed  almost  ex- 
actly like  our  hand,  with  a  large  thumblike  great  toe  quite  free 
from  the  other  toes,  and  so  articulated  as  to  be  opposable  to 
them ;  forming  with  the  long  fingerlike  toes  a  perfect  grasping 
hand.  The  sole  cannot  be  placed  horizontally  on  the  ground ; 
but  when  standing  on  a  level  surface  the  animal  rests  on  the 
outer  edge  of  the  foot  with  the  finger  and  thumblike  toes  partly 
closed,  while  the  hands  are  placed  on  the  ground  resting  on  the 
knuckles.  .  .  . 

The  four  limbs,  with  the  peculiarly  formed  feet  and  hands,  are 
those  of  arboreal  animals  which  only  occasionally  and  awkwardly 
move  on  level  ground.  The  arms  are  used  in  progression  equally 
with  the  feet,  and  the  hands  are  only  adapted  for  uses  similar  to 
those  of  our  hands  when  the  animal  is  at  rest,  and  then  but 
clumsily.  Lastly,  the  apes  are  all  hairy  animals,  like  the  ma- 
jority of  other  mammals,  man  alone  having  a  smooth  and  almost 
naked  skin.  These  numerous  and  striking  differences,  even  more 
than  those  of  the  skeleton  and  internal  anatomy,  point  to  an 
enormously  remote  epoch  when  the  race  that  was  ultimately  to 
develop  into  man  diverged  from  that  other  stock  which  con- 
tinued the  animal  type  and  ultimately  produced  the  existing 
varieties  of  anthropoid  apes. 

The  facts  now  very  briefly  summarized  amount  almost  to  a 
demonstration  that  man,  in  his  bodily  structure,  has  been  de- 


248  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

rived  from  the  lower  animals,  of  which  he  is  the  culminating 
development.  In  his  possession  of  rudimentary  structures  which 
are  functional  in  some  of  the  mammalia ;  in  the  numerous  varia- 
tions of  his  muscles  and  other  organs  agreeing  with  characters 
which  are  constant  in  some  apes  ;  in  his  embryonic  development, 
absolutely  identical  in  character  with  that  of  mammalia  in 
general,  and  closely  resembling  in  its  details  that  of  the  higher 
quadrumana ;  in  the  diseases  which  he  has  in  common  with 
other  mammalia ;  and  in  the  wonderful  approximation  of  his 
skeleton  to  those  of  one  or  other  of  the  anthropoid  apes,  we  have 
an  amount  of  evidence  in  this  direction  which  it  seems  impos- 
sible to  explain  away.  And  this  evidence  will  appear  more  forci- 
ble if  we  consider  for  a  moment  what  the  rejection  of  it  implies. 
For  the  only  alternative  supposition  is,  that  man  has  been 
specially  created  —  that  is  to  say,  has  been  produced  in  some 
quite  different  way  from  other  animals  and  altogether  inde- 
pendently of  them.  But  in  that  case  the  rudimentary  structures, 
the  animal-like  variations,  the  identical  course  of  development, 
and  all  the  other  animal  characteristics  he  possesses  are  decep- 
tive, and  inevitably  lead  us,  as  thinking  beings  making  use  of 
the  reason  which  is  our  noblest  and  most  distinctive  feature, 
into  gross  error. 

We  cannot  believe,  however,  that  a  careful  study  of  the  facts 
of  nature  leads  to  conclusions  directly  opposed  to  the  truth ;  and, 
as  we  seek  in  vain,  in  our  physical  structure  and  the  course  of 
its  development,  for  any  indication  of  an  origin  independent  of 
the  rest  of  the  animal  world,  we  are  compelled  to  reject  the  idea 
of  "special  creation"  for  man,  as  being  entirely  unsupported  by 
facts  as  well  as  in  the  highest  degree  improbable. 

The  evidence  we  now  possess  of  the  exact  nature  of  the  re- 
semblance of  man  to  the  various  species  of  anthropoid  apes, 
shows  us  that  he  has  little  special  affinity  for  any  one  rather  than 
another  species,  while  he  differs  from  them  all  in  several  impor- 
tant characters  in  which  they  agree  with  each  other.  The  con- 
clusion to  be  drawn  from  these  facts  is,  that  his  points  of  affinity 


DARWINISM   AS   APPLIED   TO   MAN  249 

connect  him  with  the  whole  group,  while  his  special  peculiarities 
equally  separate  him  from  the  whole  group,  and  that  he  must, 
therefore,  have  diverged  from  the  common  ancestral  form  before 
the  existing  types  of  anthropoid  apes  had  diverged  from  each 
other.  Now,  this  divergence  almost  certainly  took  place  as 
early  as  the  Miocene  period,  because  in  the  Upper  Miocene  de- 
posits of  Western  Europe  remains  of  two  species  of  ape  have 
been  found  allied  to  the  gibbons,  one  of  them,  Dryopithecus, 
nearly  as  large  as  a  man,  and  believed  by  M.  Lartet  to  have 
approached  man  in  its  dentition  more  than  the  existing  apes. 
We  seem  hardly,  therefore,  to  have  reached,  in  the  Upper  Mio- 
cene, the  epoch  of  the  common  ancestor  of  man  and  the  anthro- 
poids. 

The  evidence  of  the  antiquity  of  man  himself  is  also  scanty, 
and  takes  us  but  very  little  way  back  into  the  past.  We  have 
clear  proof  of  his  existence  in  Europe  in  the  latter  stages  of  the 
Glacial  epoch,  with  many  indications  of  his  presence  in  inter-Gla- 
cial or  even  pre- Glacial  times ;  while  both  the  actual  remains  and 
the  works  of  man  found  in  the  auriferous  gravels  of  California 
deep  under  lava-flows  of  Pliocene  age  show  that  he  existed  in  the 
New  World  at  least  as  early  as  in  the  Old.^  These  earliest  re- 
mains of  man  have  been  received  with  doubt,  and  even  with 
ridicule,  as  if  there  were  some  extreme  improbability  in  them. 
But,  in  point  of  fact,  the  wonder  is  that  human  remains  have 
not  been  found  more  frequently  in  pre-Glacial  deposits.  Refer- 
ring to  the  most  ancient  fossil  remains  found  in  Europe,  —  the 
Engis  and  Neanderthal  crania,  — •  Professor  Huxley  makes  the 
following  weighty  remark :  ''  In  conclusion,  I  may  say,  that  the 
fossil  remains  of  Man  hitherto  discovered  do  not  seem  to  me  to 
take  us  appreciably  nearer  to  that  lower  pithecoid  form,  by  the 
modification  of  which  he  has,  probably,  become  what  he  is." 
The  Californian  remains  and  works  of  art,  above  referred  to, 
give  no  indication  of  a  specially  low  form  of  man ;  and  it  re- 
mains an  unsolved  problem  why  no  traces  of  the  long  line  of 

*  For  a  sketch  of  the  evidence  of  Man's  Antiquity  in  America,  see  the 
Nineteenth  Century  for  November,  1887. 


2  50  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

man's  ancestors,  back  to  the  remote  period  when  he  first  branched 
off  from  the  pithecoid  type,  have  yet  been  discovered. 

It  has  been  objected  by  some  writers  —  notably  by  Professor 
Boyd  Dawkins  —  that  man  did  not  probably  exist  in  Pliocene 
times,  because  almost  all  the  known  mammalia  of  that  epoch 
are  distinct  species  from  those  now  living  on  the  earth,  and  that 
the  same  changes  of  the  environment  which  led  to  the  modifica- 
tion of  other  mammalian  species  would  also  have  led  to  a  change 
in  man.  But  this  argument  overlooks  the  fact  that  man  differs 
essentially  from  all  other  mammals  in  this  respect,  that  whereas 
any  important  adaptation  to  new  conditions  can  be  effected  in 
them  only  by  a  change  in  bodily  structure,  man  is  able  to  adapt 
himself  to  much  greater  changes  of  conditions  by  a  mental  de- 
velopment leading  him  to  the  use  of  fire,  of  tools,  of  clothing, 
of  improved  dwellings,  of  nets  and  snares,  and  of  agriculture. 
By  the  help  of  these,  without  any  change  whatever  in  his  bodily 
structure,  he  has  been  able  to  spread  over  and  occupy  the  whole 
earth ;  to  dwell  securely  in  forest,  plain,  or  mountain ;  to  in- 
habit alike  the  burning  desert  or  the  arctic  wastes ;  to  cope  with 
every  kind  of  wild  beast,  and  to  provide  himself  with  food  in 
districts  where,  as  an  animal  trusting  to  nature's  unaided  pro- 
ductions, he  would  have  starved.^ 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  from  the  time  when  the  ancestral 
man  first  walked  erect,  with  hands  freed  from  any  active  part 
in  locomotion,  and  when  his  brain  power  became  sufficient  to 
cause  him  to  use  his  hands  in  making  weapons  and  tools,  houses 
and  clothing,  to  use  fire  for  cooking,  and  to  plant  seeds  or  roots 
to  supply  himself  with  stores  of  food,  the  power  of  natural  selec- 
tion would  cease  to  act  in  producing  modifications  of  his  body, 
but  would  continuously  advance  his  mind  through  the  develop- 
ment of  its  organ,  the  brain.  Hence  man  may  have  become 
truly  man  —  the  species,  Homo  sapiens  —  even  in  the  Miocene 
period  ;  and  while  all  other  mammals  were  becoming  modified 

^This  subject  was  first  discussed  in  an  article  in  the  Anthropological  Re- 
view, May,  1864,  and  republished  in  my  Contributions  to  Natural  Selection ^ 
chap,  ix,  in  1870, 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO   MAN  251 

from  age  to  age  under  the  influence  of  ever  changing  physical 
and  biological  conditions,  he  would  be  advancing  mainly  in  intel- 
ligence, but  perhaps  also  in  stature,  and  by  that  advance  alone 
would  be  able  to  maintain  himself  as  the  master  of  all  other 
animals  and  as  the  most  widespread  occupier  of  the  earth.  It 
is  quite  in  accordance  with  this  view  that  we  find  the  most  pro- 
nounced distinction  between  man  and  the  anthropoid  apes  in 
the  size  and  complexity  of  his  brain.  Thus,  Professor  Huxley 
tells  us  that  "it  may  be  doubted  whether  a  healthy  human  adult 
brain  ever  weighed  less  than  31  or  32  ounces,  or  that  the  heaviest 
gorilla  brain  has  exceeded  20  ounces,"  although  "a  full-grown 
gorilla  is  probably  pretty  nearly  twice  as  heavy  as  a  Bosjes  man, 
or  as  many  an  European  woman."  ^  The  average  human  brain, 
however,  weighs  48  or  49  ounces,  and  if  we  take  the  average  ape 
brain  at  only  2  ounces  less  than  the  very  largest  gorilla's  brain, 
or  18  ounces,  we  shall  see  better  the  enormous  increase  which 
has  taken  place  in  the  brain  of  man  since  the  time  when  he 
branched  off  from  the  apes ;  and  this  increase  will  be  still  greater 
if  we  consider  that  the  brains  of  apes,  like  those  of  all  other  mam- 
mals, have  also  increased  from  earlier  to  later  geological  times. 
If  these  various  considerations  are  taken  into  account,  we 
must  conclude  that  the  essential  features  of  man's  structure  as 
compared  with  that  of  apes  —  his  erect  posture  and  free  hands 
—  were  acquired  at  a  comparatively  early  period,  and  were,  in 
fact,  the  characteristics  which  gave  him  his  superiority  over 
other  mammals,  and  started  him  on  the  line  of  development 
which  has  led  to  his  conquest  of  the  world.  But  during  this 
long  and  steady  development  of  brain  and  intellect,  mankind 
must  have  continuously  increased  in  numbers  and  in  the  area 
which  they  occupied  —  they  must  have  formed  what  Darwin 
terms  a  "dominant  race."  For  had  they  been  few  in  numbers 
and  confined  to  a  limited  area,  they  could  hardly  have  success- 
fully struggled  against  the  numerous  fierce  carnivora  of  that 
period,  and  against  those  adverse  influences  which  led  to  the 
extinction  of  so  many  more  powerful  animals.  A  large  popula- 
1  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  p.  102, 


252  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

tion  spread  over  an  extensive  area  is  also  needed  to  supply  an 
adequate  number  of  brain  variations  for  man's  progressive  im- 
provement. But  this  large  population  and  long-continued  de- 
velopment in  a  single  line  of  advance  renders  it  the  more  diffi- 
cult to  account  for  the  complete  absence  of  human  or  prehuman 
remains  in  all  those  deposits  which  have  furnished,  in  such  rich 
abundance,  the  remains  of  other  land  animals.  It  is  true  that 
the  remains  of  apes  are  also  very  rare,  and  we  may  well  sup- 
pose that  the  superior  intelligence  of  man  led  him  to  avoid  that 
extensive  destruction  by  flood  or  in  morass  which  seems  to  have 
often  overwhelmed  other  animals.  Yet,  when  we  consider  that 
even  in  our  own  day  men  are  not  unfrequently  overwhelmed  by 
volcanic  eruptions,  as  in  Java  and  Japan,  or  carried  away  in  vast 
numbers  by  floods,  as  in  Bengal  and  China,  it  seems  impossible 
but  that  ample  remains  of  Miocene  and  Pliocene  man  do  exist 
buried  in  the  most  recent  layers  of  the  earth's  crust,  and  that 
more  extended  research  or  some  fortunate  discovery  will  some 
day  bring  them  to  light. 

It  has  usually  been  considered  that  the  ancestral  form  of  man 
originated  in  the  tropics,  where  vegetation  is  most  abundant  and 
the  climate  most  equable.  But  there  are  some  important  objec- 
tions to  this  view.  The  anthropoid  apes,  as  well  as  most  of  the 
monkey  tribe,  are  essentially  arboreal  in  their  structure,  whereas 
the  great  distinctive  character  of  man  is  his  special  adaptation 
to  terrestrial  locomotion.  We  can  hardly  suppose,  therefore, 
that  he  originated  in  a  forest  region,  where  fruits  to  be  obtained 
by  climbing  are  the  chief  vegetable  food.  It  is  more  probable 
that  he  began  his  existence  on  the  open  plains  or  high  plateaus 
of  the  temperate  or  subtropical  zone,  where  the  seeds  of  in- 
digenous cereals  and  numerous  herbivora,  rodents,  and  game 
birds,  with  fishes  and  mollusks  in  the  lakes,  rivers,  and  seas 
supplied  him  with  an  abundance  of  varied  food.  In  such  a 
region  he  would  develop  skill  as  a  hunter,  trapper,  or  fisherman, 
and  later  as  a  herdsman  and  cultivator,  —  a  succession  of  which  we 
find  indications  in  the  paleolithic  and  neolithic  races  of  Europe. 


DARWINISM   AS   APPLIED   TO  MAN  253 

In  seeking  to  determine  the  particular  areas  in  which  his 
earliest  traces  are  likely  to  be  found,  we  are  restricted  to  some 
portion  of  the  Eastern  Hemisphere,  where  alone  the  anthropoid 
apes  exist,  or  have  apparently  ever  existed. 

There  is  good  reason  to  believe,  also,  that  Africa  must  be  ex- 
cluded, because  it  is  known  to  have  been  separated  from  the 
northern  continent  in  early  Tertiary  times,  and  to  have  acquired 
its  existing  fauna  of  the  higher  mammalia  by  a  later  union  with 
that  continent  after  the  separation  from  it  of  Madagascar,  an 
island  which  has  preserved  for  us  a  sample,  as  it  were,  of  the 
early  African  mammalian  fauna,  from  which  not  only  the  anthro- 
poid apes,  but  all  the  higher  quadrumana  are  absent.^  There 
remains  only  the  great  Euro-Asiatic  continent;  and  its  enor- 
mous plateaus,  extending  from  Persia  right  across  Tibet  and 
Siberia  to  Manchuria,  afford  an  area,  some  part  or  other  of 
which  probably  offered  suitable  conditions,  in  late  Miocene  or 
early  Pliocene  times,  for  the  development  of  ancestral  man. 

It  is  in  this  area  that  we  still  find  that  type  of  mankind  — • 
the  Mongolian  —  which  retains  a  color  of  the  skin  midway  be- 
tween the  black  or  brown-black  of  the  negro,  and  the  ruddy  or 
olive-white  of  the  Caucasian  types,  a  color  which  still  prevails 
over  all  Northern  Asia,  over  the  American  continents,  and  over 
much  of  Polynesia.  From  this  primary  tint  arose,  under  the 
influence  of  varied  conditions,  and  probably  in  correlation  with 
constitutional  changes  adapted  to  peculiar  climates,  the  varied 
tints  which  still  exist  among  mankind.  If  the  reasoning  by 
which  this  conclusion  is  reached  be  sound,  and  all  the  earlier 
stages  of  man's  development  from  an  animal  form  occurred  in 
the  area  now  indicated,  we  can  better  understand  how  it  is 
that  we  have  as  yet  met  with  no  traces  of  the  missing  links,  or 
even  of  man's  existence  during  late  Tertiary  times,  because  no 
part  of  the  world  is  so  entirely  unexplored  by  the  geologist  as 
this  very  region.  The  area  in  question  is  sufficiently  extensive 
and  varied  to  admit  of  primeval  man  having  attained  to  a  con- 

1  For  a  full  discussion  of  this  question,  see  the  author's  Geographical  Dis- 
tribution  of  Animals,  vol.  i,  p.  285. 


2  54  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

siderable  population,  and  having  developed  his  full  human  char- 
acteristics, both  physical  and  mental,  before  there  was  any  need 
for  him  to  migrate  beyond  its  limits.  One  of  these  earliest  im- 
portant migrations  was  probably  into  Africa,  where,  spreading 
westward,  he  became  modified  in  color  and  hair  in  correlation 
with  physiological  changes  adapting  him  to  the  climate  of  the 
equatorial  lowlands.  Spreading  northwestward  into  Europe 
the  moist  and  cool  climate  led  to  a  modification  of  an  opposite 
character,  and  thus  may  have  arisen  the  three  great  human  types 
which  still  exist.  Somewhat  later,  probably,  he  spread  east- 
ward into  Northwest  America  and  soon  scattered  himself  over 
the  whole  continent ;  and  all  this  may  well  have  occurred  in 
early  or  middle  Pliocene  times.  Thereafter,  at  very  long  inter- 
vals, successive  waves  of  migration  carried  him  into  every  part 
of  the  habitable  world,  and  by  conquest  and  intermixture  led 
ultimately  to  that  puzzling  gradation  of  types  which  the  eth- 
nologist in  vain  seeks  to  unravel. 

From  the  foregoing  discussion  it  will  be  seen  that  I  fully  ac- 
cept Mr.  Darwin's  conclusion  as  to  the  essential  identity  of  man's 
bodily  structure  with  that  of  the  higher  mammalia,  and  his  de- 
scent from  some  ancestral  form  common  to  man  and  the  an- 
thropoid apes.  The  evidence  of  such  descent  appears  to  me  to 
be  overwhelming  and  conclusive.  Again,  as  to  the  cause  and 
method  of  such  descent  and  modification,  we  may  admit,  at  all 
events  provisionally,  that  the  laws  of  variation  and  natural  selec- 
tion, acting  through  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  continual 
need  of  more  perfect  adaptation  to  the  physical  and  biological 
environments,  may  have  brought  about,  first  that  perfection  of 
bodily  structure  in  which  he  is  so  far  above  all  other  animals, 
and  in  coordination  with  it  the  larger  and  more  developed  brain, 
by  means  of  which  he  has  been  able  to  utilize  that  structure  in 
the  more  and  more  complete  subjection  of  the  whole  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms  to  his  service. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work,  since  he 
goes  on  to  discuss  the  moral  nature  and  mental  faculties  of  man, 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO  MAN  255 

and  derives  these  too  by  gradual  modification  and  development 
from  the  lower  animals.  Although,  perhaps,  nowhere  distinctly 
formulated,  his  whole  argument  tends  to  the  conclusion  that 
man's  entire  nature  and  all  his  faculties,  whether  moral,  intel- 
lectual, or  spiritual,  have  been  derived  from  their  rudiments  in 
the  lower  animals,  in  the  same  manner  and  by  the  action  of 
the  same  general  laws  as  his  physical  structure  has  been  derived. 
As  this  conclusion  appears  to  me  not  to  be  supported  by  adequate 
evidence,  and  to  be  directly  opposed  to  many  well-ascertained 
facts,  I  propose  to  devote  a  brief  space  to  its  discussion. 

Mr.  Darwin's  mode  of  argument  consists  in  showing  that  the 
rudiments  of  most,  if  not  of  all,  the  mental  and  moral  faculties 
of  man  can  be  detected  in  some  animals.  The  manifestations  of 
intelligence,  amounting  in  some  cases  to  distinct  acts  of  reason- 
ing, in  many  animals,  are  adduced  as  exhibiting  in  a  much  less 
degree  the  intelligence  and  reason  of  man.  Instances  of  curi- 
osity, imitation,  attention,  wonder,  and  memory  are  given ; 
while  examples  are  also  adduced  which  may  be  interpreted  as 
proving  that  animals  exhibit  kindness  to  their  fellows,  or  mani- 
fest pride,  contempt,  and  shame.  Some  are  said  to  have  the 
rudiments  of  language,  because  they  utter  several  different 
sounds,  each  of  which  has  a  definite  meaning  to  their  fellows  or 
to  their  young ;  others  the  rudiments  of  arithmetic,  because  they 
seem  to  count  and  remember  up  to  three,  four,  or  even  five.  A 
sense  of  beauty  is  imputed  to  them  on  account  of  their  own  bright 
colors  or  the  use  of  colored  objects  in  their  nests ;  while  dogs, 
cats,  and  horses  are  said  to  have  imagination,  because  they  ap- 
pear to  be  disturbed  by  dreams.  Even  some  distant  approach 
to  the  rudiments  of  religion  is  said  to  be  found  in  the  deep  love 
and  complete  submission  of  a  dog  to  his  master.^ 

Turning  from  animals  to  man,  it  is  shown  that  in  the  lowest 

savages  many  of  these  faculties  are  very  little  advanced  from  the 

condition  in  which  they  appear  in  the  higher  animals;    while 

others,  although  fairly  well  exhibited,  are  yet  greatly  inferior  to 

>  For  a  full  discussion  of  all  these  points,  see  Descent  of  Man,  chap.  iii. 


256  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

the  point  of  development  they  have  reached  in  civilized  races. 
In  particular,  the  moral  sense  is  said  to  have  been  developed 
from  the  social  instincts  of  savages,  and  to  depend  mainly  on  the 
enduring  discomfort  produced  by  any  action  which  excites  the 
general  disapproval  of  the  tribe.  Thus,  every  act  of  an  individ- 
ual which  is  believed  to  be  contrary  to  the  interests  of  the  tribe, 
excites  its  unvarying  disapprobation  and  is  held  to  be  immoral ; 
while  every  act,  on  the  other  hand,  which  is,  as  a  rule,  beneficial 
to  the  tribe,  is  warmly  and  constantly  approved,  and  is  thus  con- 
sidered to  be  right  or  moral.  From  the  mental  struggle,  when  an 
act  that  would  benefit  self  is  injurious  to  the  tribe,  there  arises 
conscience;  and  thus  the  social  instincts  are  the  foundation  of 
the  moral  sense  and  of  the  fundamental  principles  of  morality.^ 

The  question  of  the  origin  and  nature  of  the  moral  sense  and  of 
conscience  is  far  too  vast  and  complex  to  be  discussed  here,  and  a 
reference  to  it  has  been  introduced  only  to  complete  the  sketch  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  view  of  the  continuity  and  gradual  development  of 
all  human  faculties  from  the  lower  animals  up  to  savages,  and 
from  savage  up  to  civilized  man.  The  point  to  which  I  wish  spe- 
cially to  call  attention  is,  that  to  prove  continuity  and  the  pro- 
gressive development  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  faculties  from 
animals  to  man,  is  not  the  same  as  proving  that  these  faculties 
have  been  developed  by  natural  selection ;  and  this  last  is  what 
Mr.  Darwin  has  hardly  attempted,  although  to  support  his  the- 
ory it  was  absolutely  essential  to  prove  it.  Because  man's  physi- 
cal structure  has  been  developed  from  an  animal  form  by  natural 
selection,  it  does  not  necessarily  follow  that  his  mental  nature, 
even  though  developed  pari  passu  ^  with  it,  has  been  developed  by 
the  same  causes  only. 

To  illustrate  by  a  physical  analogy.  Upheaval  and  depression 
of  land,  combined  with  subaerial  denudation  by  wind  and  frost, 
rain  and  rivers,  and  marine  denudation  on  coast  lines,  were  long 
thought  to  account  for  all  the  modeling  of  the  earth's  surface  not 
directly  due  to  volcanic  action ;  and  in  the  early  editions  of 
Lyell's  Principles  of  Geology  these  are  the  sole  causes  appealed  to, 

I  Descent  of  Man,  chap.  iv.  ^  Simultaneously.  —  Editors 


DARWINISM   AS  APPLIED   TO   MAN  257 

But  when  the  action  of  glaciers  was  studied  and  the  recent  occur- 
rence of  a  Glacial  epoch  demonstrated  as  a  fact,  many  phenomena 
—  such  as  moraines  and  other  gravel  deposits,  bowlder  clay, 
erratic  bowlders,  grooved  and  rounded  rocks,  and  Alpine  lake 
basins  —  were  seen  to  be  due  to  this  altogether  distinct  cause. 
There  was  no  breach  of  continuity,  no  sudden  catastrophe ;  the 
cold  period  came  on  and  passed  away  in  the  most  gradual  manner, 
and  its  effects  often  passed  insensibly  into  those  produced  by 
denudation  or  upheaval ;  yet  none  the  less  a  new  agency  ap- 
peared at  a  definite  time,  and  new  effects  were  produced  which, 
though  continuous  with  preceding  effects,  were  not  due  to  the 
same  causes.  It  is  not,  therefore,  to  be  assumed,  without  proof 
or  against  independent  evidence,  that  the  later  stages  of  an  ap- 
parently continuous  development  are  necessarily  due  to  the 
same  causes  only  as  the  earlier  stages.  Applying  this  argument 
to  the  case  of  man's  intellectual  and  moral  nature,  I  propose  to 
show  that  certain  definite  portions  of  it  could  not  have  been  de- 
veloped by  variation  and  natural  selection  alone,  and  that,  there- 
fore, some  other  influence,  law,  or  agency  is  required  to  account 
for  them.  If  this  can  be  clearly  shown  for  any  one  or  more  of  the 
special  faculties  of  intellectual  man,  we  shall  be  justified  in  as- 
suming that  the  same  unknown  cause  or  power  may  have  had  a 
much  wider  influence,  and  may  have  profoundly  influenced  the 
whole  course  of  his  development. 

We  have  ample  evidence  that,  in  all  the  lower  races  of  man, 
what  may  be  termed  the  mathematical  faculty  is  either  absent, 
or,  if  present,  quite  unexercised.  The  Bushmen  and  the  Brazil- 
ian Wood-Indians  are  said  not  to  count  beyond  two.  Many 
Australian  tribes  only  have  words  for  one  and  two,  which  are  com- 
bined to  make  three,  four,  five,  or  six,  beyond  which  they  do  not 
count.  The  Damaras  of  South  Africa  only  count  to  three ;  and 
Mr.  Galton  gives  a  curious  description  of  how  one  of  them  was 
hopelessly  puzzled  when  he  had  sold  two  sheep  for  two  sticks  of 
tobacco  each,  and  received  four  sticks  in  payment.  He  could 
only  find  out  that  he  was  correctly  paid  by  taking  two  sticks  and 


258  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

then  giving  one  sheep,  then  receiving  two  sticks  more  and  giving 
the  other  sheep.  Even  the  comparatively  intellectual  Zulus  can 
only  count  up  to  ten  by  using  the  hands  and  fingers.  The  Ahts 
of  Northwest  America  count  in  nearly  the  same  manner,  and 
most  of  the  tribes  of  South  America  are  no  further  advanced.^ 
The  Kaffirs  have  great  herds  of  cattle,  and  if  one  is  lost  they  miss 
it  immediately,  but  this  is  not  by  counting,  but  by  noticing  the 
absence  of  one  they  know ;  just  as  in  a  large  family  or  a  school  a 
boy  is  missed  without  going  through  the  process  of  counting. 
Somewhat  higher  races,  as  the  Eskimos,  can  count  up  to 
twenty  by  using  the  hands  and  the  feet ;  and  other  races  get  even 
further  than  this  by  saying  "one  man"  for  twenty,  "two  men" 
for  forty,  and  so  on,  equivalent  to  our  rural  mode  of  reckoning  by 
scores.  From  the  fact  that  so  many  of  the  existing  savage  races 
can  only  count  to  four  or  five,  Sir  John  Lubbock  thinks  it  im- 
probable that  our  earliest  ancestors  could  have  counted  as  high 
as  ten.2 

When  we  turn  to  the  more  civilized  races,  we  find  the  use  of 
numbers  and  the  art  of  counting  greatly  extended.  Even  the 
Tongas  of  the  South  Sea  islands  are  said  to  have  been  able  to 
count  as  high  as  100,000.  But  mere  counting  does  not  imply 
either  the  possession  or  the  use  of  anything  that  can  be  really 
called  the  mathematical  faculty,  the  exercise  of  which  in  any 
broad  sense  has  only  been  possible  since  the  introduction  of  the 
decimal  notation.  The  Greeks,  the  Romans,  the  Egyptians,  the 
Jews,  and  the  Chinese  had  all  such  cumbrous  systems  that  any- 
thing like  a  science  of  arithmetic,  beyond  very  simple  operations, 

^  Lubbock's  Origin  of  Civilization,  fourth  edition,  pp.  434-440 ;  Tylor's 
Primitive  Culture,  chap.  vii. 

2  It  has  been  recently  stated  that  some  of  these  facts  are  erroneous,  and 
that  some  AustraHans  can  keep  accurate  reckoning  up  to  100,  or  more,  when 
required.  But  this  does  not  alter  the  general  fact  that  many  low  races,  in- 
cluding the  Australians,  have  no  words  for  high  numbers  and  never  require 
to  use  them.  If  they  are  now,  with  a  little  practice,  able  to  count  much 
higher,  this  indicates  the  possession  of  a  faculty  which  could  not  have  been 
developed  under  the  law  of  utility  only,  since  the  absence  of  words  for  such 
high  numbers  shows  that  they  were  neither  used  nor  required. 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO  MAN  259 

was  impossible ;  and  the  Roman  system,  by  which  the  year  1888 
would  be  written  MDCCCLXXXVIII,  was  that  in  common  use 
in  Europe  down  to  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  centuries,  and 
even  much  later  in  some  places.  Algebra,  which  was  invented 
by  the  Hindus,  from  whom  also  came  the  decimal  notation,  was 
not  introduced  into  Europe  till  the  thirteenth  century,  although 
the  Greeks  had  some  acquaintance  with  it ;  and  it  reached  West- 
ern Europe  from  Italy  only  in  the  sixteenth  century.  It  was, 
no  doubt,  owing  to  the  absence  of  a  sound  system  of  numeration 
that  the  mathematical  talent  of  the  Greeks  was  directed  chiefly 
to  geometry,  in  which  science  Euclid,  Archimedes,  and  others 
made  such  brilliant  discoveries.  It  is,  however,  during  the  last 
three  centuries  only  that  the  civilized  world  appears  to  have  be- 
come conscious  of  the  possession  of  a  marvelous  faculty  which, 
when  supplied  with  the  necessary  tools  in  the  decimal  notation, 
the  elements  of  algebra  and  geometry,  and  the  power  of  rapidly 
communicating  discoveries  and  ideas  by  the  art  of  printing,  has 
developed  to  an  extent,  the  full  grandeur  of  which  can  be  appre- 
ciated only  by  those  who  have  devoted  some  time  (even  if  unsuc- 
cessfully) to  the  study. 

The  facts  now  set  forth  as  to  the  almost  total  absence  of 
mathematical  faculty  in  savages  and  its  wonderful  development 
in  quite  recent  times  are  exceedingly  suggestive,  and  in  regard 
to  them  we  are  hmited  to  two  possible  theories.  Either  pre- 
historic and  savage  man  did  not  possess  this  faculty  at  all  (or 
only  in  its  merest  rudiments) ;  or  they  did  possess  it,  but  had 
neither  the  means  nor  the  incitements  for  its  exercise.  In  the 
former  case  we  have  to  ask  by  what  means  has  this  faculty  beer 
so  rapidly  developed  in  all  civilized  races,  many  of  which  a  few 
centuries  back  were,  in  this  respect,  almost  savages  themselves ; 
while  in  the  latter  case  the  difficulty  is  still  greater,  for  we  have  to 
assume  the  existence  of  a  faculty  which  had  never  been  used 
either  by  the  supposed  possessors  of  it  or  by  their  ancestors. 

Let  us  take,  then,  the  least  difficult  supposition  —  that  savages 
possessed  only  the  mere  rudiments  of  the  faculty,  such  as  their 
ability  to  count,  sometimes  up  to  ten,  but  with  an  utter  inability 


26o  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

to  perform  the  very  simplest  processes  of  arithmetic  or  of  geom- 
etry^ and  inquire  how  this  rudimentary  faculty  became  rapidly 
developed  into  that  of  a  Newton,  a  La  Place,  a  Gauss,  or  a  Cay- 
ley.  We  will  admit  that  there  is  every  possible  gradation  be- 
tween these  extremes,  and  that  there  has  been  perfect  continuity 
in  the  development  of  the  faculty;  but  we  ask,  What  motive 
power  caused  its  development  ? 

It  must  be  remembered  we  are  here  dealing  solely  with  the 
capability  of  the  Darwinian  theory  to  account  for  the  origin  of 
the  mind,  as  well  as  it  accounts  for  the  origin  of  the  body  of  man, 
and  we  must,  therefore,  recall  the  essential  features  of  that  the- 
ory. These  are,  the  preservation  of  useful  variations  in  the 
struggle  for  life;  that  no  creature  can  be  improved  beyond  its 
necessities  for  the  time  being ;  that  the  law  acts  by  life  and  death, 
and  by  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  We  have  to  ask,  therefore, 
what  relation  the  successive  stages  of  improvement  of  the  mathe- 
matical faculty  had  to  the  life  or  death  of  its  possessors ;  to  the 
struggles  of  tribe  with  tribe,  or  nation  with  nation ;  or  to  the  ulti- 
mate survival  of  one  race  and  the  extinction  of  another.  If  it 
cannot  possibly  have  had  any  such  effects,  then  it  cannot  have 
been  produced  by  natural  selection. 

It  is  evident  that  in  the  struggles  of  savage  man  with  the  ele- 
ments and  with  wild  beasts,  or  of  tribe  with  tribe,  this  faculty 
can  have  had  no  influence.  It  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  early 
migrations  of  man,  or  with  the  conquest  and  extermination  of 
weaker  by  more  powerful  peoples.  The  Greeks  did  not  success- 
fully resist  the  Persian  invaders  by  any  aid  from  their  few  mathe- 
maticians, but  by  military  training,  patriotism,  and  self-sacrifice. 
The  barbarous  conquerors  of  the  East,  Timurlane  and  Gen'gkhis 
Khan,  did  not  owe  their  success  to  any  superiority  of  intellect  or 
of  mathematical  faculty  in  themselves  or  their  followers.  Even 
if  the  great  conquests  of  the  Romans  were,  in  part,  due  to  their 
systematic  military  organization,  and  to  their  skill  in  making 
roads  and  encampments,  which  may,  perhaps,  be  imputed  to 
some  exercise  of  the  mathematical  faculty,  that  did  not  prevent 
them  from  being  conquered  in  turn  by  barbarians,  in  whom  it 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO  MAN  261 

was  almost  entirely  absent.  And  if  we  take  the  most  civilized 
peoples  of  the  ancient  world  —  the  Hindus,  the  Arabs,  the 
Greeks,  and  the  Romans,  all  of  whom  had  some  amount  of  mathe- 
matical talent  —  we  find  that  it  is  not  these,  but  the  descendants 
of  the  barbarians  of  those  days  —  the  Celts,  the  Teutons,  and  the 
Slavs  —  who  have  proved  themselves  the  fittest  to  survive  in  the 
great  struggle  of  races,  although  we  cannot  trace  their  steadily 
growing  success  during  past  centuries  either  to  the  possession  of 
any  exceptional  mathematical  faculty  or  to  its  exercise.  They 
have  indeed  proved  themselves,  to-day,  to  be  possessed  of  a  mar- 
velous endowment  of  the  mathematical  faculty ;  but  their  suc- 
cess at  home  and  abroad,  as  colonists  or  as  conquerors,  as  individ- 
uals or  as  nations,  can  in  no  way  be  traced  to  this  faculty,  since 
they  were  almost  the  last  who  devoted  themselves  to  its  exercise. 
We  conclude,  then,  that  the  present  gigantic  development  of  the 
mathematical  faculty  is  wholly  unexplained  by  the  theory  of  nat- 
ural selection,  and  must  be  due  to  some  altogether  distinct  cause. 

These  distinctively  human  faculties  follow  very  closely  the 
lines  of  the  mathematical  faculty  in  their  progressive  develop- 
ment, and  serve  to  enforce  the  same  argument.     Among  the  lower 
savages  music,  as  we  understand  it,  hardly  exists,  though  they 
all  delight  in  rude  musical  sounds,  as  of  drums,  tom-toms,  or 
gongs;   and  they  also  sing  in  monotonous  chants.     Almost  ex- 
actly as  they  advance  in  general  intellect,  and  in  the  arts  of 
social  life,  their  appreciation  of  music  appears  to  rise  in  propor- 
tion ;    and  we  find  among  them  rude  stringed  instruments  and 
whistles,  till,  in  Java,  we  have  regular  bands  of  skilled  performers, 
I  probably  the  successors  of  Hindu  musicians  of  the  age  before  the 
Mohammedan  conquest.     The  Egyptians  are  believed  to  have 
been  the  earUest  musicians,  and  from  them  the  Jews  and  the 
,  Greeks,  no  doubt,  derived  their  knowledge  of  the  art ;  but  it 
seems  to  be  admitted  that  neither  the  latter  nor  the  Romans 
knew  anything  of  harmony  or  of  the  essential  features  of  mod- 
ern music.     Till  the  fifteenth  century  little  progress  appears  to 
have  been  made  in  the  science  or  the  practice  of  music;  but 


262  ALFRED   RUSSEL   WALLACE 

since  that  era  it  has  advanced  with  marvelous  rapidity,  its  prog- 
ress being  curiously  parallel  with  that  of  mathematics,  inasmuch 
as  great  musical  geniuses  appeared  suddenly  among  different 
nations,  equal  in  their  possession  of  this  special  faculty  to  any 
that  have  since  arisen. 

As  with  the  mathematical,  so  with  the  musical  faculty,  it  is  im- 
possible to  trace  any  connection  between  its  possession  and  sur- 
vival in  the  struggle  for  existence.  It  seems  to  have  arisen  as  a 
result  of  social  and  intellectual  advancement,  not  as  a  cause;  and 
there  is  some  evidence  that  it  is  latent  in  the  lower  races,  since 
under  European  training  native  military  bands  have  been  formed 
in  many  parts  of  the  world,  which  have  been  able  to  perform 
creditably  the  best  modern  music. 

The  artistic  faculty  has  run  a  somewhat  different  course, 
though  analogous  to  that  of  the  faculties  already  discussed. 
Most  savages  exhibit  some  rudiments  of  it,  either  in  drawing  or 
carving  human  or  animal  figures ;  but,  almost  without  exception, 
these  figures  are  rude  and  such  as  would  be  executed  by  the 
ordinary  inartistic  child.  In  fact,  modern  savages  are,  in  this 
respect,  hardly  equal  to  those  prehistoric  men  who  represented 
the  mammoth  and  the  reindeer  on  pieces  of  horn  or  bone.  With 
any  advance  in  the  arts  of  social  life,  we  have  a  corresponding  ad- 
vance in  artistic  skill  and  taste,  rising  very  high  in  the  art  of 
Japan  and  India,  but  culminating  in  the  marvelous  sculpture  of 
the  best  period  of  Grecian  history.  In  the  Middle  Ages  art  was 
chiefly  manifested  in  ecclesiastical  architecture  and  the  illumina- 
tion of  manuscripts,  but  from  the  thirteenth  to  the  fifteenth 
centuries  pictorial  art  revived  in  Italy  and  attained  to  a  degree 
of  perfection  which  has  never  been  surpassed.  This  revival  was 
followed  closely  by  the  schools  of  Germany,  the  Netherlands, 
Spain,  France,  and  England,  showing  that  the  true  artistic  fac- 
ulty belonged  to  no  one  nation,  but  was  fairly  distributed  among 
the  various  European  races. 

These  several  developments  of  the  artistic  faculty,  whether 
manifested  in  sculpture,  painting,  or  architecture,  are  evidently 
outgrowths  of  the  human  intellect  which  have  no  immediate 


DARWINISM   AS   APPLIED   TO   MAN  263 

influence  on  the  survival  of  individuals  or  of  tribes,  or  on  the  suc- 
cess of  nations  in  their  struggles  for  supremacy  or  for  existence. 
The  glorious  art  of  Greece  did  not  prevent  the  nation  from  falling 
under  the  sway  of  the  less  advanced  Roman ;  while  we  ourselves, 
among  whom  art  was  the  latest  to  arise,  have  taken  the  lead  in 
the  colonization  of  the  world,  thus  proving  our  mixed  race  to  be 
the  fittest  to  survive. 

The  law  of  Natural  Selection  or  the  survival  of  the  fittest  is,  as 
its  name  implies,  a  rigid  law,  which  acts  by  the  Hfe  or  death  of 
the  individuals  submitted  to  its  action.  From  its  very  nature  it 
can  act  only  on  useful  or  hurtful  characteristics,  ehminating  the 
latter  and  keeping  up  the  former  to  a  fairly  general  level  of  effi- 
ciency. Hence  it  necessarily  follows  that  the  characters  devel- 
oped by  its  means  will  be  present  in  all  the  individuals  of  a  species, 
and,  though  varying,  will  not  vary  very  widely  from  a  common 
standard.  The  amount  of  variation  we  found,  in  our  third 
chapter,  to  be  about  one  fifth  or  one  sixth  of  the  mean  value  — 
that  is,  if  the  mean  value  were  taken  at  100,  the  variations  would 
reach  from  80  to  120,  or  somewhat  more,  if  very  large  numbers 
were  compared.  In  accordance  with  this  law  we  find  that  all 
those  characters  in  man  which  were  certainly  essential  to  him 
during  his  early  stages  of  development  exist  in  all  savages  with 
some  approach  to  equality.  In  the  speed  of  running,  in  bodily 
strength,  in  skill  with  weapons,  in  acuteness  of  vision,  or  in  power 
of  following  a  trail,  all  are  fairly  proficient,  and  the  differences 
of  endowment  do  not  probably  exceed  the  limits  of  variation  in 
animals  above  referred  to.  So,  in  animal  instinct  or  intelligence, 
we  find  the  same  general  level  of  development.  Every  wren 
makes  a  fairly  good  nest  like  its  fellows ;  every  fox  has  an  average 
amount  of  the  sagacity  of  its  race ;  while  all  the  higher  birds  and 
mammals  have  the  necessary  affections  and  instincts  needful  for 
the  protection  and  bringing  up  of  their  offspring. 

But  in  those  specially  developed  faculties  of  civilized  man 
which  we  have  been  considering,  the  case  is  very  different. 
They  exist  only  in  a  small  proportion  of  individuals,  while  the 


264  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

difference  of  capacity  between  these  favored  individuals  and  the 
average  of  mankind  is  enormous.  Taking  first  the  mathematical 
faculty,  probably  fewer  than  one  in  a  hundred  really  possess  it, 
the  great  bulk  of  the  population  having  no  natural  abiUty  for 
the  study,  or  feeling  the  slightest  interest  in  it.  And  if  we  at- 
tempt to  measure  the  amount  of  variation  in  the  faculty  itself 
between  a  first-class  mathematician  and  the  ordinary  run  of 
people  who  find  any  kind  of  calculation  confusing  and  altogether 
devoid  of  interest,  it  is  probable  that  the  former  could  not  be 
estimated  at  less  than  a  hundred  times  the  latter,  and  perhaps  a 
thousand  times  would  more  nearly  measure  the  difference  be- 
tween them. 

The  artistic  faculty  appears  to  agree  pretty  closely  with  tho 
mathematical  in  its  frequency.  The  boys  and  girls  who,  going 
beyond  the  mere  conventional  designs  of  children,  draw  what 
they  see,  not  what  they  know  to  be  the  shape  of  things ;  who  nat- 
urally sketch  in  perspective,  because  it  is  thus  they  see  objects ; 
who  see,  and  represent  in  their  sketches,  the  light  and  shade  as 
well  as  the  mere  outlines  of  objects ;  and  who  can  draw  recogniz- 
able sketches  of  every  one  they  know,  are  certainly  very  few  com- 
pared with  those  who  are  totally  incapable  of  anything  of  the 
kind.  From  some  inquiries  I  have  made  in  schools,  and  from 
my  own  observation,  I  believe  that  those  who  are  endowed  with 
this  natural  artistic  talent  do  not  exceed,  even  if  they  come  up  to, 
one  per  cent  of  the  whole  population. 

The  variations  in  the  amount  of  artistic  faculty  are  certainly 
very  great,  even  if  we  do  not  take  the  extremes.  The  grada- 
tions of  power  between  the  ordinary  man  or  woman  "who  does 
not  draw,"  and  whose  attempts  at  representing  any  object,  ani- 
mate or  inanimate,  would  be  laughable,  and  the  average  good 
artist  who,  with  a  few  bold  strokes,  can  produce  a  recognizable 
and  even  effective  sketch  of  a  landscape,  a  street,  or  an  animal, 
are  very  numerous ;  and  we  can  hardly  measure  the  difference 
between  them  at  less  than  fifty  or  a  hundred  fold. 

The  musical  faculty  is  undoubtedly,  in  its  lower  forms,  less  un- 
common than  either  of  the  preceding,  but  it  still  differs  essen- 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO  MAN  265 

daily  from  the  necessary  or  useful  faculties  in  that  it  is  almost 
entirely  wanting  in  one  half  even  of  civihzed  men.  For  every 
person  who  draws,  as  it  were  instinctively,  there  are  probably 
five  or  ten  who  sing  or  play  without  having  been  taught  and  from 
mere  innate  love  and  perception  of  melody  and  harmony.^  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  probably  about  as  many  who  seem  ab- 
solutely deficient  in  musical  perception,  who  take  httle  pleasure 
in  it,  who  cannot  perceive  discords  or  remember  tunes,  and  who 
could  not  learn  to  sing  or  play  with  any  amount  of  study.  The 
gradations,  too,  are  here  quite  as  great  as  in  mathematics  or 
pictorial  art,  and  the  special  faculty  of  the  great  musical  composer 
must  be  reckoned  many  hundreds  or  perhaps  thousands  of  times 
greater  than  that  of  the  ordinary  "unmusical"  person  above  re- 
ferred to. 

It  appears  then,  that,  both  on  account  of  the  limited  number  of 
persons  gifted  with  the  mathematical,  the  artistic,  or  the  musical 
faculty,  as  well  as  from  the  enormous  variations  in  its  development, 
these  mental  powers  differ  widely  from  those  which  are  essential 
to  man,  and  are,  for  the  most  part,  common  to  him  and  the 
lower  animals ;  and  that  they  could  not,  therefore,  possibly  have 
been  developed  in  him  by  means  of  the  law  of  natural  selection. 

We  have  thus  shown,  by  two  distinct  Unes  of  argument,  that 
faculties  are  developed  in  civilized  man  which,  both  in  their 
mode  of  origin,  their  function,  and  their  variations,  are  altogether 
distinct  from  those  other  characters  and  faculties  which  are  es- 
sential to  him,  and  which  have  been  brought  to  their  actual 
state  of  efficiency  by  the  necessities  of  his  existence.  And  be- 
sides the  three  which  have  been  specially  referred  to,  there  are 
others  which  evidently  belong  to  the  same  class.  Such  is  the 
metaphysical  faculty,  which  enables  us  to  form  abstract  concep- 
tions of  a  kind  the  most  remote  from  all  practical  applications, 
to  discuss  the  ultimate  causes  of  things,  the  nature  and  qualities 
of  matter,  motion,  and  force,  of  space  and  time,  of  cause  and 

^  I  am  informed,  however,  by  a  music  master  in  a  large  school  that  only 
about  one  per  cent  have  real  or  decided  musical  talent,  corresponding  curi- 
ously with  the  estimate  of  the  mathematicians. 


266  ALFRED   RUSSEL  W.\LLACE 

effect,  of  will  and  conscience.  Speculations  on  these  abstract 
and  difficult  questions  are  impossible  to  savages,  who  seem  to 
have  no  mental  faculty  enabhng  them  to  grasp  the  essential 
ideas  or  conceptions ;  yet  whenever  any  race  attains  to  civiliza- 
tion, and  comprises  a  body  of  people  who,  whether  as  priests  or 
philosophers,  are  reheved  from  the  necessity  of  labor  or  of 
taking  an  active  part  in  war  or  government,  the  metaphysical 
faculty  appears  to  spring  suddenly  into  existence,  although,  like 
the  other  faculties  we  have  referred  to,  it  is  always  confined  to  a 
very  Hmited  proportion  of  the  population. 

In  the  same  class  we  may  place  the  peculiar  faculty  of  wit  and 
humor,  an  altogether  natural  gift  whose  development  appears 
to  be  parallel  with  that  of  the  other  exceptional  faculties.  Like 
them,  it  is  almost  unknown  among  savages,  but  appears  more 
or  less  frequently  as  civilization  advances  and  the  interests  of 
life  become  more  numerous  and  more  complex.  Like  them,  too, 
it  is  altogether  removed  from  utility  in  the  struggle  for  life,  and 
appears  sporadically  in  a  very  small  percentage  of  the  popula- 
tion ;  the  majority  being,  as  is  well  known,  totally  unable  to  say 
a  witty  thing  or  make  a  pun  even  to  save  their  Uves. 

The  facts  now  set  forth  prove  the  existence  of  a  number  of 
mental  faculties  which  either  do  not  exist  at  all  or  exist  in  a  very 
rudimentary  condition  in  savages,  but  appear  almost  suddenly 
and  in  perfect  development  in  the  higher  civilized  races.  These 
same  faculties  are  further  characterized  by  their  sporadic  charac- 
ter, being  well  developed  only  in  a  very  small  proportion  of  the 
community ;  and  by  the  enormous  amount  of  variation  in  their 
development,  the  higher  manifestations  of  them  being  many 
times  —  perhaps  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  times  —  stronger  than 
the  lower.  Each  of  these  characteristics  is  totally  inconsistent 
with  any  action  of  the  law  of  natural  selection  in  the  production 
of  the  faculties  referred  to ;  and  the  facts,  taken  in  their  entirety, 
compel  us  to  recognize  some  origin  for  them  wholly  distinct  from 
that  which  has  served  to  account  for  the  animal  characteristics 
—  whether  bodily  or  mental  —  of  man. 


DARWINISM  AS  APPLIED   TO  MAN  267 

The  special  faculties  we  have  been  discussing  clearly  point  to 
the  existence  in  man  of  something  which  he  has  not  derived  from 
his  animal  progenitors  —  something  which  we  may  best  refer  to 
as  being  of  a  spiritual  essence  or  nature,  capable  of  progressive 
development  under  favorable  conditions.  On  the  hypothesis 
of  this  spiritual  nature,  superadded  to  the  animal  nature  of  man, 
we  are  able  to  understand  much  that  is  otherwise  mysterious  or 
unintelligible  in  regard  to  him,  especially  the  enormous  influence 
of  ideas,  principles,  and  beliefs  over  his  whole  life  and  actions. 
Thus  alone  we  can  understand  the  constancy  of  the  martyr,  the 
unselfishness  of  the  philanthropist,  the  devotion  of  the  patriot, 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  artist,  and  the  resolute  and  persevering 
search  of  the  scientific  worker  after  nature's  secrets.  Thus  we 
may  perceive  that  the  love  of  truth,  the  delight  in  beauty,  the 
passion  for  justice,  and  the  thrill  of  exultation  with  which  we 
hear  of  any  act  of  courageous  self-sacrifice,  are  the  workings 
within  us  of  a  higher  nature  which  has  not  been  developed  by 
means  of  the  struggle  for  material  existence. 

It  will,  no  doubt,  be  urged  that  the  admitted  continuity  of 
man's  progress  from  the  brute  does  not  admit  of  the  introduction 
of  new  causes,  and  that  we  have  no  evidence  of  the  sudden  change 
of  nature  which  such  introduction  would  bring  about.  The 
fallacy  as  to  new  causes  involving  any  breach  of  continuity,  or 
any  sudden  or  abrupt  change,  in  the  effects,  has  already  been 
shown ;  but  we  will  further  point  out  that  there  are  at  least 
three  stages  in  the  development  of  the  organic  world  when  some 
new  cause  or  power  must  necessarily  have  come  into  action. 

The  first  stage  is  the  change  from  inorganic  to  organic,  when 
the  earliest  vegetable  cell,  or  the  living  protoplasm  out  of  which 
it  arose,  first  appeared.  This  is  often  imputed  to  a  mere  increase 
of  complexity  of  chemical  compounds ;  but  increase  of  com- 
plexity, with  consequent  instability,  even  if  we  admit  that  it 
may  have  produced  protoplasm  as  a  chemical  compound,  could 
certainly  not  have  produced  living  protoplasm  —  protoplasm 
which  has  the  power  of  growth  and  of  reproduction,  and  of  that 
continuous  process  of  development  which  has  resulted  in  the 


268  ALFRED   RUSSEL  WALLACE 

marvelous  variety  and  complex  organization  of  the  whole  vege- 
table kingdom.  There  is  in  all  this  something  quite  beyond  and 
apart  from  chemical  changes,  however  complex ;  and  it  has  bean 
well  said  that  the  first  vegetable  cell  was  a  new  thing  in  the  world, 
possessing  altogether  new  powers  —  that  of  extracting  and  fixing 
carbon  from  the  carbon  dioxide  of  the  atmosphere,  that  of  indefi- 
nite reproduction,  and,  still  more  marvelous,  the  power  of  varia- 
tion and  of  reproducing  those  variations,  till  endless  compUca- 
tions  of  structure  and  varieties  of  form  have  been  the  result. 
Here,  then,  we  have  indications  of  a  new  power  at  work,  which 
we  may  term  vitality,  since  it  gives  to  certain  forms  of  matter 
all  those  characters  and  properties  which  constitute  Life. 

The  next  stage  is  stUl  more  marvelous,  still  more  completely 
beyond  all  possibility  of  explanation  by  matter,  its  laws  and 
forces.  It  is  the  introduction  of  sensation  or  consciousness,  con- 
stituting the  fundamental  distinction  between  the  animal  and 
vegetable  kingdoms.  Here  all  idea  of  mere  complication  of 
structure  producing  the  result  is  out  of  the  question.  We  feel  it 
to  be  altogether  preposterous  to  assume  that  at  a  certain  stage  of 
complexity  of  atomic  constitution,  and  as  a  necessary  result  of 
that  complexity  alone,  an  ego  should  start  into  existence,  a  thing 
that  feels,  that  is  conscious  of  its  own  existence.  Here  we  have 
the  certainty  that  something  new  has  arisen,  a  being  whose  nas- 
cent consciousness  has  gone  on  increasing  in  power  and  definite- 
ness  till  it  has  culminated  in  the  higher  animals.  No  verbal  ex- 
planation or  attempt  at  explanation  —  such  as  the  statement 
that  life  is  the  result  of  the  molecular  forces  of  the  protoplasm,  or 
that  the  whole  existing  organic  universe  from  the  amoeba  up  to 
man  was  latent  in  the  fire-mist  from  which  the  solar  system  was 
developed  —  can  afford  any  mental  satisfaction,  or  help  us  in 
any  way  to  a  solution  of  the  mystery. 

The  third  stage  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  existence  in  man  of  a 
number  of  his  most  characteristic  and  noblest  faculties,  those 
which  raise  him  furthest  above  the  brutes  and  open  up  possibili- 
ties of  almost  indefinite  advancement.  These  faculties  could 
not  possibly  have  been  developed  by  means  of  the  same  laws 


DARWINISM   AS  APPLIED   TO   MAN  269 

which  have  determined  the  progressive  development  of  the  or- 
ganic world  in  general,  and  also  of  man's  physical  organism.^ 

These  three  distinct  stages  of  progress  from  the  inorganic 
world  of  matter  and  motion  up  to  man,  point  clearly  to  an  unseen 
universe  —  to  a  world  of  spirit,  to  which  the  world  of  matter  is 
altogether  subordinate.  To  this  spiritual  world  we  may  refer 
the  marvelously  complex  forces  which  we  know  as  gravitation, 
cohesion,  chemical  force,  radiant  force,  and  electricity,  without 
which  the  material  universe  could  not  exist  for  a  moment  in  its 
present  form,  and  perhaps  not  at  all,  since  without  these  forces, 
and  perhaps  others  which  may  be  termed  atomic,  it  is  doubtful 
whether  matter  itself  could  have  any  existence.  And  still  more 
surely  can  we  refer  to  it  those  progressive  manifestations  of  Life 
in  the  vegetable,  the  animal,  and  man  —  which  we  may  classify 
as  unconscious,  conscious,  and  intellectual  life,  —  and  which 
probably  depend  upon  different  degrees  of  spiritual  influx.  I 
have  already  shown  that  this  involves  no  necessary  infraction  of 
the  law  of  continuity  in  physical  or  mental  evolution ;  whence  it 
follows  that  any  difficulty  we  may  find  in  discriminating  the 
inorganic  from  the  organic,  the  lower  vegetable  from  the  lower 
animal  organisms,  or  the  higher  animals  from  the  lowest  types 
of  man,  has  no  bearing  at  all  upon  the  question.  This  is  to  be 
decided  by  showing  that  a  change  in  essential  nature  (due,  prob- 
ably, to  causes  of  a  higher  order  than  those  of  the  material  uni- 
verse) took  place  at  the  several  stages  of  progress  which  I  have 
indicated;  a  change  which  may  be  none  the  less  real  because 
absolutely  imperceptible  at  its  point  of  origin,  as  is  the  change 
that  takes  place  in  the  curve  in  which  a  body  is  moving  when  the 
appUcation  of  some  new  force  causes  the  curve  to  be  slightly 
altered. 

Those  who  admit  my  interpretation  of  the  evidence  now  ad- 
duced—  strictly  scientific  evidence  in  its  appeal  to  facts  which 
are  clearly  what  ought  not  to  be  on  the  materialistic  theory — will 

^  For  an  earlier  discussion  of  this  subject,  with  some  wider  applications,  see 
the  author's  Conlributions  to  the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  chap.  x. 


270  ALFRED    RUSSEL   WALLACE 

be  able  to  accept  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  as  not  in  any  way 
inconsistent  with  the  theory  of  evolution,  but  as  dependent  on 
those  fundamental  laws  and  causes  which  furnish  the  very  mate- 
rials for  evolution  to  work  with.  They  will  also  be  relieved  from 
the  crushing  mental  burden  imposed  upon  those  who  —  main- 
taining that  we,  in  common  with  the  rest  of  nature,  are  but  prod- 
ucts of  the  blind  eternal  forces  of  the  universe,  and  believing 
also  that  the  time  must  come  when  the  sun  will  lose  his  heat  and 
all  life  on  the  earth  necessarily  cease  —  have  to  contemplate  a  not 
very  distant  future  in  which  all  this  glorious  earth — which  for  un- 
told millions  of  years  has  been  slowly  developing  forms  of  life  and 
beauty  to  culminate  at  last  in  man  —  shall  be  as  if  it  had  never 
existed ;  who  are  compelled  to  suppose  that  all  the  slow  growths 
of  our  race  struggling  towards  a  higher  life,  all  the  agony  of 
martyrs,  all  the  groans  of  victims,  all  the  evil  and  misery  and 
undeserved  suffering  of  the  ages,  all  the  struggles  for  freedom, 
all  the  efforts  towards  justice,  all  the  aspirations  for  virtue  and 
the  well-being  of  humanity,  shall  absolutely  vanish,  and,  "like 
the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision,  leave  not  a  wrack  behind." 

As  contrasted  with  this  hopeless  and  soiol-deadening  belief,  we, 
who  accept  the  existence  of  a  spirtual  world,  can  look  upon  the 
universe  as  a  grand  consistent  whole  adapted  in  all  its  parts  to 
the  development  of  spiritual  beings  capable  of  indefinite  life  and 
perfectibility.  To  us,  the  whole  purpose,  the  only  raison  d'etre 
of  the  world  —  with  all  its  complexities  of  physical  structure, 
with  its  grand  geological  progress,  the  slow  evolution  of  the 
vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms,  and  the  ultimate  appearance  of 
man  —  was  the  development  of  the  human  spirit  in  association 
with  the  human  body.  From  the  fact  that  the  spirit  of  man  — 
the  man  himself  —  is  so  developed,  we  may  well  beUeve  that  this 
is  the  only,  or  at  least  the  best,  way  for  its  development ;  and 
we  may  even  see  in  what  is  usually  termed  "evil"  on  the  earth, 
one  of  the  most  efficient  means  of  its  growth.  For  we  know  that 
the  noblest  faculties  of  man  are  strengthened  and  perfected  by 
struggle  and  effort ;  it  is  by  unceasing  warfare  against  physical 
evils  and  in  the  midst  of  difficulty  and  danger  that  energy,  cour- 


DARWINISM   AS   APPLIED   TO   MAN  271 

age,  self-reliance,  and  industry  have  become  the  common  quali- 
ties of  the  northern  races ;  it  is  by  the  battle  with  moral  evil  in 
all  its  hydra-headed  forms,  that  the  still  nobler  qualities  of 
justice  and  mercy  and  humanity  and  self-sacrifice  have  been 
steadily  increasing  in  the  world.  Beings  thus  trained  and  strength- 
ened by  their  surroundings,  and  possessing  latent  faculties  capa- 
ble of  such  noble  development,  are  surely  destined  for  a  higher 
and  more  permanent  existence ;  and  we  may  confidently  be- 
lieve with  our  greatest  living  poet  — 

That  life  is  not  as  idle  ore, 

But  iron  dug  from  central  gloom, 

And  heated  hot  with  burning  fears, 
And  dipt  in  baths  of  hissing  tears. 

And  batter'd  with  the  shocks  of  doom 

To  shape  and  use.  ^ 

We  thus  find  that  the  Darwinian  theory,  even  when  carried  out 
to  its  extreme  logical  conclusion,  not  only  does  not  oppose,  but 
lends  a  decided  support  to,  a  belief  in  the  spiritual  nature  of  man. 
It  shows  us  how  man's  body  may  have  been  developed  from  that 
of  a  lower  animal  form  under  the  law  of  natural  selection ;  but 
it  also  teaches  us  that  we  possess  intellectual  and  moral  faculties 
which  could  not  have  been  so  developed,  but  must  have  had  an- 
other origin ;  and  for  this  origin  we  can  only  find  an  adequate 
cause  in  the  unseen  universe  of  Spirit. 

^  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam,  cxviii  — •  Editors, 


THE   BELFAST   ADDRESS 
John  Tyndall 

[John  Tyndall  (1820-1893)  holds  a  position  of  great  fame  and  importance 
in  the  field  of  investigative  science.  In  his  youth  he  was  largely  self-educated, 
and  held  early  positions  as  surveyor,  engineer,  and  teacher  of  mathematics. 
His  advanced  studies  were  pursued  at  Marburg,  where  he  worked  with  tre- 
mendous energy,  but  under  straitened  financial  circumstances.  Tyndall's 
general  note  probably  dated  from  the  period  of  the  publication  of  his  Glaciers 
of  ike  Alps,  1857-1859,  which  represented  the  results  of  an  investigative  ex- 
cursion to  Switzerland  in  company  with  Huxley.  From  this  time  on,  he  rap- 
idly gained  popularity  as  a  writer  and  lecturer  on  scientific  topics.  It  is  a 
mistake,  however,  to  regard  Tyndall  as  merely  a  popularizer  of  science,  for 
his  investigations,  which  were  both  extensive  and  minute,  are  numbered 
among  the  most  important  contributions  of  his  century  to  geological,  chem- 
ical, meteorological,  and  physical  science. 

The  so-called  Belfast  Address  was  delivered  as  Tjoidall's  inaugural  address 
at  the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science  at 
Belfast  in  1874,  and  was  published  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  in  the 
same  year.  This  address,  an  imposing  reminder  that  science  and  literary 
art  are  not  inevitably  unrelated,  reviews  the  history  of  ancient  and  modern 
efforts  to  develop  an  explanation  of  physical  and  spiritual  existence  from  the 
evidence  of  scientific  observation,  as  opposed  to  the  assumptions  of  religious 
tradition.  As  a  frank  challenge  to  the  adherents  of  a  literal  interpretation 
of  biblical  tradition,  the  Belfast  Address  brought  down  upon  Tyndall  the  full 
blast  of  polemical  fire  that  had  been  smoldering  angrily  since  1859,  when 
the  publication  of  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  first  brought  forward  conclu- 
sive justification  for  the  free  criticism  of  dogmatic  theology.  Tyndall's 
position  in  this  controversy  may  be  found  in  his  Fragments  of  Science.] 

An  impulse  inherent  in  primeval  man  turned  his  thoughts  and 
questionings  betimes  toward  the  sources  of  natural  phenomena. 
The  same  impulse,  inherited  and  intensified,  is  the  spur  of  scien- 
tific action  to-day.    Determined  by  it,  by  a  process  of  abstraction 

272 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  273 

from  experience  we  form  physical  theories  which  lie  beyond  the 
pale  of  experience,  but  which  satisfy  the  desire  of  the  mind  to  ^e 
every  natural  occurrence  resting  upon  a  cause.  In  forming 
their  notions  of  the  origin  of  things,  our  earliest  historic  (and 
doubtless,  we  might  add,  our  prehistoric)  ancestors  pursued,  as 
far  as  their  intelligence  permitted,  the  same  course.  They  also 
fell  back  upon  experience,  but  with  this  difference  —  that  the 
particular  experiences  which  furnished  the  weft  and  woof  of 
their  theories  were  drawn,  not  from  the  study  of  nature,  but  from 
what  lay  much  closer  to  them,  the  observation  of  men.  Their 
theories  accordingly  took  an  anthropomorphic  form.  To  su- 
persensual  beings,  which,  "however  potent  and  invisible,  were 
nothing  but  a  species  of  human  creatures,  perhaps  raised  from 
among  mankind,  and  retaining  all  human  passions  and  appe- 
tites," ^  were  handed  over  the  rule  and  governance  of  natural  phe- 
nomena. 

Tested  by  observation  and  reflection,  these  early  notions  failed 
in  the  long  run  to  satisfy  the  more  penetrating  intellects  of  our 
race.  Far  in  the  depths  of  history  we  find  men  of  exceptional 
power  differentiating  themselves  from  the  crowd,  rejecting 
these  anthropomorphic  notions,  and  seeking  to  connect  natural 
phenomena  with  their  physical  principles.  But  long  prior  to 
these  purer  effects  of  the  understanding,  the  merchant  had  been 
abroad,  and  rendered  the  philosopher  possible ;  commerce  had 
been  developed,  wealth  amassed,  leisure  for  travel  and  for  specu- 
lation secured,  while  races  educated  under  different  conditions, 
and  therefore  differently  informed  and  endowed,  had  been  stim- 
ulated and  sharpened  by  mutual  contact.  In  those  regicns 
where  the  commercial  aristocracy  of  ancient  Greece  mingled 
with  its  Eastern  neighbors,  the  sciences  were  born,  being  nurtured 
and  developed  by  free-thinking  and  courageous  men.  The 
state  of  things  to  be  displaced  may  be  gathered  from  a  passage 
of  Euripides  quoted  by  Hume.  "There  is  nothing  in  the  world ; 
no  glory,  no  prosperity.  The  gods  toss  all  into  confusion ;  mix 
everything  with  its  reverse,  that  all  of  us,  from  our  ignorance  and 
1  Hume,  Natural  History  of  Religion. 


274  JOHN  TYNDALL 

uncertainty,  may  pay  them  the  more  worship  and  reverence." 
Now,  as  science  demands  the  radical  extirpation  of  caprice,  and 
the  absolute  reliance  upon  law  in  nature,  there  grew  with  the 
growth  of  scientific  notions  a  desire  and  determination  to  sweep 
from  the  field  of  theory  this  mob  of  gods  and  demons,  and  to 
place  natural  phenomena  on  a  basis  more  congruent  with  them- 
selves. 

The  problem  which  had  been  previously  approached  from 
above  was  now  attacked  from  below;  theoretic  effort  passed 
from  the  super-  to  the  sub-sensible.  It  was  felt  that  to  construct 
the  universe  in  idea  it  was  necessary  to  have  some  notion  of  its 
constituent  parts  —  of  what  Lucretius  subsequently  called  the 
"First  Beginnings."  Abstracting  again  from  experience,  the 
leaders  of  scientific  speculation  reached  at  length  the  pregnant 
doctrine  of  atoms  and  molecules,  the  latest  developments  of 
which  were  set  forth  with  such  power  and  clearness  at  the  last 
meeting  of  the  British  x\ssociation.  Thought,  no  doubt,  had 
long  hovered  about  this  doctrine  before  it  attained  the  precision 
and  completeness  which  it  assumed  in  the  mind  of  Democritus,' 
a  philosopher  who  may  well  for  a  moment  arrest  our  attention. 
"Few  great  men,"  says  Lange,  in  his  excellent  History  of  Ma- 
terialism, a  work  to  the  spirit  and  the  letter  of  which  I  am 
equally  indebted,  "have  been  so  despitefully  used  by  history  as 
Democritus.  In  the  distorted  images  sent  down  to  us  through 
unscientific  traditions  there  remains  of  him  almost  nothing  but 
the  name  of  the  'laughing  philosopher,'  while  figures  of  immeas- 
urably smaller  significance  spread  themselves  at  full  length 
before  us."  Lange  speaks  of  Bacon's  high  appreciation  of  De- 
mocritus —  for  ample  illustrations  of  which  I  am  indebted  to  my 
excellent  friend  Mr.  Spedding,  the  learned  editor  and  biographer 
of  Bacon.  It  is  evident,  indeed,  that  Bacon  considered  Democ- 
ritus to  be  a  man  of  weightier  metal  than  either  Plato  or  Aris- 
totle, though  their  philosophy  "was  noised  and  celebrated  in  the 
schools,  amid  the  din  and  pomp  of  professors."  It  was  not  they, 
but  Genseric  and  Attila  and  the  barbarians,  who  destroyed  the 

^  Born  460  B.C. 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  275 

atomic  philosophy.  "For  at  a  time  when  all  human  learning 
had  suffered  shipwreck,  these  planks  of  Aristotelian  and  Platonic 
philosophy,  as  being  of  a  lighter  and  more  inflated  substance, 
were  preserved  and  come  down  to  us,  while  things  more  solid 
sank  and  almost  passed  into  oblivion." 

The  principles  enunciated  by  Democritus  reveal  his  uncom- 
promising antagonism  to  those  who  deduced  the  phenomena  of 
nature  from  the  caprices  of  the  gods.  They  are  briefly  these : 
I.  From  nothing  comes  nothing.  Nothing  that  exists  can  be 
destroyed.  All  changes  are  due  to  the  combination  and  sepa- 
ration of  molecules.  2.  Nothing  happens  by  chance.  Every 
occurrence  has  its  cause  from  which  it  follows  by  necessity. 
3.  The  only  existing  things  are  the  atoms  and  empty  space ;  all 
else  is  mere  opinion.  4.  The  atoms  are  infinite  in  number,  and 
infinitely  various  in  form ;  they  strike  together,  and  the  lateral 
motions  and  whirlings  which  thus  arise  are  the  beginnings  of 
worlds.  5.  The  varieties  of  all  things  depend  upon  the  varieties 
'  of  their  atoms,  in  number,  size,  and  aggregation.  6.  The  soul 
consists  of  free,  smooth,  round  atoms,  like  those  of  fire.  These 
are  the  most  mobile  of  all.  They  interpenetrate  the  whole  body, 
and  in  their  motions  the  phenomena  of  life  arise.  Thus  the 
atoms  of  Democritus  are  individually  without  sensation ;  they 
combine  in  obedience  to  mechanical  laws ;  and  not  only  organic 
forms,  but  the  phenomena  of  sensation  and  thought,  are  also 
the  result  of  their  combination. 

That  great  enigma,  "the  exquisite  adaptation  of  one  part  of 
an  organism  to  another  part,  and  to  the  conditions  of  life," 
more  especially  the  construction  of  the  human  body,  Democritus 
made  no  attempt  to  solve.  Empedocles,  a  man  of  more  fiery 
and  poetic  nature,  introduced  the  notion  of  love  and  hate  among 
the  atoms  to  account  for  their  combination  and  separation. 
Noticing  this  gap  in  the  doctrine  of  Democritus,  he  struck  in 
with  the  penetrating  thought,  linked,  however,  with  some  wild 
speculation,  that  it  lay  in  the  very  nature  of  those  combinations 
which  were  suited  to  their  ends  (in  other  words,  in  harmony  with 
their  environment)  to  maintain  themselves,  while  unfit  combina- 


276  JOHN  TYXDALL 

tions,  ha-ving  no  proper  habitat,  must  rapidly  disappear.  Thus 
more  than  2000  years  ago  the  doctrine  of  the  "survival  of  the 
fittest,"  which  in  our  day,  not  on  the  basis  of  vague  conjecture, 
but  of  positive  knowledge,  has  been  raised  to  such  extraordinary 
significance,  had  received  at  all  events  partial  enunciation.^ 

Epicurus,"  said  to  be  the  son  of  a  poor  schoolmaster  at  Samos, 
is  the  next  dominant  figure  in  the  history  of  the  atomic  phi- 
losophy.    He  mastered  the  writings  of  Democritus,  heard  lec- 
tures in  Athens,  returned  to  Samos,  and  subsequently  wandered 
through   various    countries.     He   finally   returned   to    Athens, 
where  he  bought  a  garden,  and  surrounded  himself  by  pupils, 
in  the  midst  of  whom  he  lived  a  pure  and  serene  life,  and  died  a 
peaceful  death.     His  philosophy  was  almost  identical  with  that 
of  Democritus ;   but  he  never  quoted  either  friend  or  foe.     One 
main  object  of  Epicurus  w^as  to  free  the  world  from  superstition 
and  the  fear  of  death.     Death  he  treated  with  indifference.     It 
merely  robs  us  of  sensation.     As  long  as  we  are,  death  is  not ; 
and  when  death  is,  we  are  not.     Life  has  no  more  evil  for  him 
who  has  made  up  his  mind  that  it  is  no  e^^l  not  to  live.     He 
adored  the  gods,  but  not  in  the  ordinary  fashion.     The  idea  of 
divine  power,  properly  purified,  he  thought  an  elevating  one. 
Still  he  taught,  "Not  he  is  godless  who  rejects  the  gods  of  the 
crowd,  but  rather  he  who  accepts  them."     The  gods  were  to 
him  eternal  and  immortal  beings,  whose  blessedness  excluded 
every  thought  of  care  or  occupation  of  any  kind.     Nature  pur- 
sues her  course  in  accordance  with  everlasting  laws,  the  gods 
never  interfering.     They  haunt 

The  lucid  interspace  of  world  and  world 
Where  never  creeps  a  cloud  or  moves  a  wind. 
Nor  ever  falls  the  least  white  star  of  snow, 
Nor  ever  lowest  roll  of  thunder  moans. 
Nor  sound  of  human  sorrow  mounts  to  mar 
Their  sacred  everlasting  calm.  ' 

1  Lange,  H'islory  of  Materialism,  2d  edit.,  p.  23. 

-  Born  342  B.C. 

"  Tennyson's  Lucretius. 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  277 

Lange  considers  the  relation  of  Epicurus  to  the  gods  subjec- 
tive; the  indication  probably  of  an  ethical  requirement  of  his 
own  nature.  We  cannot  read  history  with  open  eyes,  or  study 
human  nature  to  its  depths,  and  fail  to  discern  such  a  require- 
ment. Man  never  has  been  and  he  never  will  be  satisfied  with 
the  operations  and  products  of  the  understanding  alone ;  hence 
physical  science  cannot  cover  all  the  demands  of  his  nature. 
But  the  history  of  the  efforts  made  to  satisfy  these  demands 
might  be  broadly  described  as  a  history  of  errors  —  the  error 
consisting  in  ascribing  fixity  to  that  which  is  fluent,  which  varies 
as  we  vary,  being  gross  when  we  are  gross,  and  becoming,  as 
our  capacities  widen,  more  abstract  and  sublime.  On  one  great 
point  the  mind  of  Epicurus  was  at  peace.  He  neither  sought  nor 
expected,  here  or  hereafter,  any  personal  profit  from  his  relation 
to  the  gods.  And  it  is  assuredly  a  fact  that  loftiness  and  serenity 
of  thought  may  be  promoted  by  conceptions  which  involve  no 
idea  of  profit  of  this  kind.  "Did  I  not  believe,"  said  a  great 
man  to  me  once,  "that  an  Intelligence  is  at  the  heart  of  things, 
my  life  on  earth  would  be  intolerable."  The  utterer  of  these 
words  is  not,  in  my  opinion,  rendered  less  noble,  but  more  noble, 
by  the  fact  that  it  was  the  need  of  ethical  harmony  here,  and  not 
the  thought  of  personal  profit  hereafter,  that  prompted  his 
observation. 

A  century  and  a  half  after  the  death  of  Epicurus,  Lucretius  ^ 
wrote  his  great  poem,  "On  the  Nature  of  Things,"  in  which  he, 
a  Roman,  developed  with  extraordinary  ardor  the  philosophy  of 
his  Greek  predecessor.  He  wishes  to  win  over  his  friend  Mem- 
nius  to  the  school  of  Epicurus ;  and  although  he  has  no  rewards 
in  a  future  life  to  offer,  although  his  object  appears  to  be  a  purely 
negative  one,  he  addresses  his  friend  with  the  heat  of  an  apostle. 
His  object,  like  that  of  his  great  forerunner,  is  the  destruction 
of  superstition ;  and  considering  that  men  trembled  before 
every  natural  event  as  a  direct  monition  from  the  gods,  and  that 
everlasting  torture  was  also  in  prospect,  the  freedom  aimed  at 
by  Lucretius  might  perhaps  be  deemed  a  positive  good.     "This 

1  Born  99  B.C. 


2/8  JOHN  TYNDALL 

terror,"  he  says,  "and  darkness  of  mind  must  be  dispelled, 
not  by  the  rays  of  the  sun  and  glittering  shafts  of  day,  but  by 
the  aspect  and  the  law  of  nature."  He  refutes  the  notion  that 
anything  can  come  out  of  nothing,  or  that  that  which  is  once 
begotten  can  be  recalled  to  nothing.  The  first  beginnings,  the 
atoms,  are  indestructible,  and  into  them  all  things  can  be  dis- 
solved at  last.  Bodies  are  partly  atoms  and  partly  combinations 
of  atoms ;  but  the  atoms  nothing  can  quench.  They  are  strong 
in  solid  singleness,  and  by  their  denser  combination  all  things  can 
be  closely  packed  and  exhibit  enduring  strength.  He  denies 
that  matter  is  infinitely  di\dsible.  We  come  at  length  to  the 
atoms,  without  which,  as  an  imperishable  substratum,  all  order 
in  the  generation  and  development  of  things  would  be  destroyed. 
The  mechanical  shock  of  the  atoms  being  in  his  view  the  all- 
sufficient  cause  of  things,  he  combats  the  notion  that  the  con- 
stitution of  nature  has  been  in  any  way  determined  by  intelli- 
gent design.  The  interaction  of  the  atoms  throughout  infinite 
time  rendered  all  manner  of  combinations  possible.  Of  these 
the  fit  ones  persisted,  while  the  unfit  ones  disappeared.  Not 
after  sage  deliberation  did  the  atoms  station  themselves  in  their 
right  places,  nor  did  they  bargain  what  motions  they  should 
assume.  From  all  eternity  they  have  been  driven  together, 
and,  after  trying  motions  and  unions  of  every  kind,  they  fell 
at  length  into  the  arrangements  out  of  which  this  system  of 
things  has  been  formed.  His  grand  conception  of  the  atoms 
falling  silently  through  immeasurable  ranges  of  space  and  time 
suggested  the  nebular  h^^othesis  ^  to  Kant,  its  first  propounder. 
"If  you  will  apprehend  and  keep  in  mind  these  things,  nature, 
free  at  once,  and  rid  of  her  haughty  lords,  is  seen  to  do  all  things 
spontaneously,  of  herself,  without  the  meddling  of  the  gods."^ 

^  The  theory  that  the  stars  and  the  planetary  bodies  have  been  evolved  from 
diflfused  nebulous  matter.  — •  Editors. 

2  Monro's  translation  [of  Lucretius].  In  his  criticism  of  this  work  (Con- 
temporary Review,  1867)  Dr.  Hayman  does  not  appear  to  be  aware  of  the 
really  sound  and  subtile  observations  on  which  the  reasoning  of  Lucretius, 
though  erroneous,  sometimes  rests. 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  279 

During  the  centuries  between  the  first  of  these  three  phi- 
losophers and  the  last,  the  human  intellect  was  active  in  other 
fields  than  theirs.  The  Sophists  had  run  through  their  career. 
At  Athens  had  appeared  the  three  men,  Socrates,  Plato,  and 
Aristotle,  whose  yoke  remains  to  some  extent  unbroken  to 
the  present  hour.  Within  this  period  also  the  school  of  Alexan- 
dria was  founded,  Euclid  wrote  his  Elements,  and  he  and 
others  made  some  advance  in  optics.  Archimedes  had  pro- 
pounded the  theory  of  the  lever  and  the  principles  of  hydro- 
statics. Pythagoras  had  made  his  experiments  on  the  harmonic 
intervals,  while  astronomy  was  immensely  enriched  by  the  dis- 
coveries of  Hipparchus,  who  was  followed  by  the  historically 
more  celebrated  Ptolemy.  Anatomy  had  been  made  the  basis  of 
scientific  medicine ;  and  it  is  said  by  Draper  ^  that  vivisection 
then  began.  In  fact,  the  science  of  ancient  Greece  had  already 
cleared  the  world  of  the  fantastic  images  of  divinities  operating 
capriciously  through  natural  phenomena.  It  had  shaken  itself 
free  from  that  fruitless  scrutiny  "by  the  internal  light  of  the 
mind  alone,"  which  had  vainly  sought  to  transcend  experience 
and  reach  a  knowledge  of  ultimate  causes.  Instead  of  accidental 
observation,  it  had  introduced  observation  with  a  purpose ; 
instruments  were  employed  to  aid  the  senses;  and  scientific 
method  was  rendered  in  a  great  measure  complete  by  the  union 
of  induction  and  experiment. 

What,  then,  stopped  its  victorious  advance?  Why  was  the 
scientific  intellect  compelled,  like  an  exhausted  soil,  to  lie  fallow 
for  nearly  two  millenniums  before  it  could  regather  the  elements 
necessary  to  its  fertility  and  strength?  Bacon  has  already 
let  us  know  one  cause ;  Whewell  ascribes  this  stationary  period 
to  four  causes  —  obscurity  of  thought,  servility,  intolerance  of 
disposition,  enthusiasm  of  temper;  and  he  gives  striking  ex- 
amples of  each. 2  But  these  characteristics  must  have  had  their 
causes,  which  lay  in  the  circumstances  of  the  time.  Rome 
and  the  other  cities  of  the  empire  had  fallen  into  moral  putre- 

'  lihlory  af  the  IntcUcctual  Development  of  Europe,  p.  295. 
^  History  of  the  Inductive  Sciences,  vol.  i. 


28o  JOHN   TYNDALL 

faction.  Christianity  had  appeared,  offering  the  Gospel  to  the 
poor,  and,  by  moderation  if  not  asceticism  of  Hfe,  practically 
protesting  against  the  profligacy  of  the  age.  The  sufferings  of 
the  early  Christians,  and  the  extraordinary  exaltation  of  mind 
which  enabled  them  to  triumph  over  the  diabolical  tortures  to 
which  they  were  subjected,^  must  have  left  traces  not  easily 
effaced.  They  scorned  the  earth,  in  view  of  that  "building  of 
God,  that  house  not  made  with  hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens." 
The  Scriptures  which  ministered  to  their  spiritual  needs  were 
also  the  measure  of  their  science.  When,  for  example,  the 
celebrated  question  of  antipodes  came  to  be  discussed,  the  Bible 
was  with  many  the  ultimate  court  of  appeal.  Augustine,  who 
flourished  a.d.  400,  would  not  deny  the  rotundity  of  the  earth, 
but  he  would  deny  the  possible  existence  of  inhabitants  at  the 
other  side,  "because  no  such  race  is  recorded  in  Scripture  among 
the  descendants  of  Adam."  Archbishop  Boniface  was  shocked 
at  the  assumption  of  a  "world  of  human  beings  out  of  the  reach 
of  the  means  of  salvation."  Thus  reined  in,  science  was  not 
likely  to  make  much  progress.  Later  on,  the  political  and  the- 
ological strife  between  the  Church  and  civil  governments,  so 
powerfully  depicted  by  Draper,  must  have  done  much  to  stifle 
investigation. 

Whewell  makes  many  wise  and  brave  remarks  regarding  the 
spirit  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was  a  menial  spirit.  The  seekers 
after  natural  knowledge  had  forsaken  that  fountain  of  living 
waters,  the  direct  appeal  to  nature  by  observation  and  experi- 
ment, and  had  given  themselves  up  to  the  remanipulation  of  the 
notions  of  their  predecessors.  It  was  a  time  when  thought  had 
become  abject,  and  when  the  acceptance  of  mere  authority  led, 
as  it  always  does  in  science,  to  intellectual  death.  Natural 
events,  instead  of  being  traced  to  physical,  were  referred  to 
moral  causes,  while  an  exercise  of  the  fantasy,  almost  as 
degrading  as  the  Spiritualism  of  the  present  day,  took  the 
place  of  scientific  speculation.  Then  came  the  mysticism 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  magic,  alchemy,  the  Neoplatonic  philoso- 
*  Depicted  with  terrible  vividness  in  Kenan's  Antichrist. 


THE   BELFAST   ADDRESS  281 

phy/  with  its  visionary  though  sublime  attractions,  which  caused 
men  to  look  with  shame  upon  their  own  bodies  as  hindrances  to 
the  absorption  of  the  creature  in  the  blessedness  of  the  Creator. 
Finally  came  the  scholastic  philosophy,  a  fusion,  according  to 
Lange,  of  the  least  mature  notions  of  Aristotle  with  the  Chris- 
tianity of  the  West.  Intellectual  immobility  was  the  result.  As 
a  traveler  without  a  compass  in  a  fog  may  wander  long,  im- 
agining he  is  making  way,  and  find  himself,  after  hours  of  toil, 
at  his  starting-point,  so  the  schoolmen,  having  tied  and  untied 
the  same  knots,  and  formed  and  dissipated  the  same  clouds, 
found  themselves  at  the  end  of  centuries  in  their  old  position. 

With  regard  to  the  influence  wielded  by  Aristotle  in  the 
Middle  Ages,  and  which,  though  to  a  less  extent,  he  still  wields, 
I  would  ask  permission  to  make  one  remark.  When  the  human 
mind  has  achieved  greatness  and  given  evidence  of  extraordinary 
power  in  any  domain,  there  is  a  tendency  to  credit  it  with  similar 
power  in  all  other  domains.  Thus  theologians  have  found  com- 
fort and  assurance  in  the  thought  that  Newton  dealt  with  the 
question  of  revelation,  forgetful  of  the  fact  that  the  very  devotion 
of  his  powers,  through  all  the  best  years  of  his  life,  to  a  totally 
different  class  of  ideas,  not  to  speak  of  any  natural  disqualifica- 
tion, tended  to  render  him  less  instead  of  more  competent  tc 
deal  with  theological  and  historic  questions.  Goethe,  starting 
from  his  established  greatness  as  a  poet,  and  indeed  from  his 
positive  discoveries  in  natural  history,  produced  a  profound 
impression  among  the  painters  of  Germany  when  he  published 
his  Farbenlehre,  in  which  he  endeavored  to  overthrow  New- 
ton's theory  of  colors.  This  theory  he  deemed  so  obviously 
absurd  that  he  considered  its  author  a  charlatan,  and  attacked 
him  with  a  corresponding  vehemence  of  language.  In  the  do- 
main of  natural  history  Goethe  had  made  really  considerable 
discoveries ;  and  we  have  high  authority  for  assuming  that 
had  he  devoted  himself  wholly  to  that  side  of  science,  he  might 
have  reached  in  it  an  eminence  comparable  with  that  which  he 

1  Neoplatonism  was  an  Alexandrian  modification  of  Plato's  philosophy 
influenced  in  part  by  Christian  teachings.  —  Editors. 


282  JOHN  TYNDALL 

attained  as  a  poet.  In  sharpness  of  observation,  in  the  detection 
of  analogies,  however  apparently  remote,  in  the  classification 
and  organization  of  facts  according  to  the  analogies  discerned, 
Goethe  possessed  extraordinary  powers.  These  elements  of 
scientific  inquiry  fall  in  with  the  discipline  of  the  poet.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  a  mind  thus  richly  endowed  in  the  direction 
of  natural  history  may  be  almost  shorn  of  endowment  as  re- 
gards the  more  strictly  called  physical  and  mechanical  sciences. 
Goethe  was  in  this  condition.  He  could  not  formulate  distinct 
mechanical  conceptions ;  he  could  not  see  the  force  of  mechan- 
ical reasoning;  and  in  regions  where  such  reasoning  reigns 
supreme  he  became  a  mere  ignis  fatuus  ^  to  those  who  followed 

him. 

I  have   sometimes  permitted  myself  to   compare  Aristotle 
with  Goethe ;  to  credit  the  Stagirite  with  an  almost  superhuman 
power  of  amassing  and  systematizing  facts,  but  to  consider  him 
fatally  defective  on  that  side  of  the  mind  in  respect  to  which 
incompleteness  has  been  justly  ascribed  to  Goethe.     Whewell 
refers  the  errors  of  Aristotle,  not  to  a  neglect  of  facts,  but  to 
"a  neglect  of  the  idea  appropriate  to  the  facts;  the  idea  of 
mechanical  cause,  which  is  force,  and  the  substitution  of  vague 
or  inapplicable  notions,  involving  only  relations  of  space  or  emo- 
tions of  wonder."     This  is  doubtless  true ;   but  the  word  "neg- 
lect" implies  mere  intellectual  misdirection,  whereas  in  Aris- 
totle, as  in  Goethe,  it  was  not,  I  believe,  misdirection,  but  sheer 
natural  incapacity,  which  lay  at  the  root  of  his  mistakes.     As  a 
physicist,  Aristotle  displayed  what  we  should  consider  some  of 
the  worst  attributes  of  a  modern  physical  investigator  —  indis- 
tinctness of  ideas,  confusion  of  mind,  and  a  confident  use  of 
language,  which  led  to  the  delusive  notion  that  he  had  really 
mastered  his  subject,  while  he  as  yet  had  failed  to  grasp  even  the 
elements  of  it.     He  put  words  in  the  place  of  things,  subject  in 
the  place  of  object.     He  preached  induction  without  practicing 
it,  inverting  the  true  order  of  inquiry  by  passing  from  the  general 
to  the  particular,  instead  of  from  the  particular  to  the  general 
1  Delusive  influence.  —  Editors. 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  283 

He  made  of  the  universe  a  closed  sphere,  in  the  center  of  which 
he  fixed  the  earth,  proving  from  general  principles,  to  his  own 
satisfaction  and  that  of  the  world  for  nearly  two  thousand  years, 
that  no  other  universe  was  possible.  His  notions  of  motion 
were  entirely  unphysical.  It  was  natural  or  unnatural,  better 
or  worse,  calm  or  violent  —  no  real  mechanical  conception 
regarding  it  lying  at  the  bottom  of  his  mind.  He  affirmed  that 
a  vacuum  could  not  exist,  and  proved  that  if  it  did  exist,  motion 
in  it  would  be  impossible.  He  determined  a  priori  how  many 
species  of  animals  must  exist,  and  showed  on  general  principles 
why  animals  must  have  such  and  such  parts.  When  an  emi- 
nent contemporary  philosopher,  who  is  far  removed  from  errors 
of  this  kind,  remembers  these  abuses  of  the  a  priori  method, 
he  will  be  able  to  make  allowance  for  the  jealousy  of  physicists 
as  to  the  acceptance  of  so-called  a  priori  truths.  Aristotle's 
errors  of  detail  were  grave  and  numerous.  He  affirmed  that 
only  in  man  we  had  the  beating  of  the  heart,  that  the  left  side 
of  the  body  was  colder  than  the  right,  that  men  have  more 
teeth  than  women,  and  that  there  is  an  empty  space,  not  at  the 
front,  but  at  the  back,  of  every  man's  head. 

There  is  one  essential  quality  in  physical  conceptions  which 
was  entirely  wanting  in  those  of  Aristotle  and  his  followers.  I 
wish  it  could  be  expressed  by  a  word  untainted  by  its  associa- 
tions; it  signifies  a  capability  of  being  placed  as  a  coherent 
picture  before  the  mind.  The  Germans  express  the  act  of  pic- 
turing by  the  word  vorstellen,  and  the  picture  they  call  a  Vor- 
stellung.  We  have  no  word  in  English  which  comes  nearer  to 
our  requirements  than  imagination,  and,  taken  with  its  proper 
limitations,  the  word  answers  very  well ;  but,  as  just  intimated, 
it  is  tainted  by  its  associations,  and  therefore  objectionable  to 
some  minds.  Compare,  with  reference  to  this  capacity  of  mental 
presentation,  the  case  of  the  Aristotelian  who  refers  the  ascent 
of  water  in  a  pump  to  Nature's  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum,  with 
that  of  Pascal  when  he  proposed  to  solve  the  question  of  atmos- 
pheric pressure  by  the  ascent  of  the  Puy  de  Dome.  In  the  one 
case  the  terms  of  the  explanation  refuse  to  fall  into  place  as  a 


284  JOHN  TYNDALL 

physical  image ;  in  the  other  the  image  is  distinct,  the  fall  and 
rise  of  the  barometer  being  clearly  figured  as  the  balancing  of 
two  varying  and  opposing  pressures. 

During  the  drought  of  the  Middle  Ages  in  Christendom,  the 
Arabian  intellect,  as  forcibly  shown  by  Draper,  was  active. 
With  the  intrusion  of  the  Moors  into  Spain,  cleanliness,  order, 
learning,  and  refinement  took  the  place  of  their  opposites. 
When  smitten  with  disease,  the  Christian  peasant  resorted  to 
a  shrine;  the  Moorish  one  to  an  instructed  physician.  The 
Arabs  encouraged  translations  from  the  Greek  philosophers, 
but  not  from  the  Greek  poets.  They  turned  in  disgust  "from 
the  lewdness  of  our  classical  mythology,  and  denounced  as  an  un- 
pardonable blasphemy  all  connection  between  the  impure  Olym- 
pian Jove  and  the  Most  High  God."  Draper  traces  still  further 
than  Whe well  the  Arab  elements  in  our  scientific  terms,  and  points 
out  that  the  undergarment  of  ladies  retains  to  this  hour  its 
Arab  name.  He  gives  examples  of  what  Arabian  men  of  science 
accomplished,  dwelling  particularly  on  Alhazen,  who  was  the 
first  to  correct  the  Platonic  notion  that  rays  of  light  are  emitted 
by  the  eye.  He  discovered  atmospheric  refraction,  and  points 
out  that  we  see  the  sun  and  moon  after  they  have  set.  He 
explains  the  enlargement  of  the  sun  and  moon,  and  the  shorten- 
ing of  the  vertical  diameters  of  both  these  bodies  when  near  the 
horizon.  He  is  aware  that  the  atmosphere  decreases  in  density 
with  increase  of  height,  and  actually  fixes  its  height  at  fifty- 
eight  and  one  half  miles.  In  the  Book  of  the  Balance  Wisdom, 
he  sets  forth  the  connection  between  the  weight  of  the  atmos- 
phere and  its  increasing  density.  He  shows  that  a  body  will 
weigh  differently  in  a  rare  and  a  dense  atmosphere.  He  considers 
the  force  with  which  plunged  bodies  rise  through  heavier  media. 
He  understands  the  doctrine  of  the  center  of  gravity,  and  applies 
it  to  the  investigation  of  balances  and  steelyards.  He  recog- 
nizes gravity  as  a  force,  though  he  falls  into  the  error  of  making 
it  diminish  at  a  distance,  and  of  making  it  purely  terrestrial. 
He  knows  the  relation  between  the  velocities,  spaces,  and  times 
of  falling  bodies,  and  has  distinct  ideas  of  capillary  attraction. 


THE    BELFAST  ADDRESS  285 

He  improves  the  hydrometer.  The  determination  of  the  den- 
sities of  bodies  as  given  by  Alhazen  approaches  very  closely  to 
our  own.  "  I  join,"  says  Draper,  "  in  the  pious  prayer  of  Alhazen, 
'  that  in  the  day  of  judgment  the  All-Merciful  will  take  pity  on 
the  soul  of  Abur-Raihan,  because  he  was  the  first  of  the  race  of 
men  to  construct  a  table  of  specific  gravities.'  "  If  all  this  be 
historic  truth  (and  I  have  entire  confidence  in  Dr.  Draper), 
well  may  he  "deplore  the  systematic  manner  in  which  the  lit- 
erature of  Europe  has  contrived  to  put  out  of  sight  our  scientific 
obligations  to  the  Mohammedans."  ^ 

Toward  the  close  of  the  stationary  period,  a  word-weariness, 
if  I  may  so  express  it,  took  more  and  more  possession  of  men's 
minds.  Christendom  had  become  sick  of  the  school  philosophy 
and  its  verbal  wastes,  which  led  to  no  issue,  but  left  the  intellect 
in  everlasting  haze.  Here  and  there  was  heard  the  voice  of  one 
impatiently  crying  in  the  wilderness,  "Not  unto  Aristotle,  not 
unto  subtle  hypotheses,  not  unto  Church,  Bible,  or  blind  tradi- 
tion, must  we  turn  for  a  knowledge  of  the  universe,  but  to  the 
direct  investigation  of  nature  by  observation  and  experiment." 
In  1543  the  epoch-making  work  of  Copernicus  on  the  paths  of 
the  heavenly  bodies  appeared.  The  total  crash  of  Aristotle's 
closed  universe  with  the  earth  at  its  center  followed  as  a  conse- 
quence; and  "the  earth  moves"  became  a  kind  of  watchword 
among  intellectual  freemen.  Copernicus  was  the  Canon  of  the 
Church  of  Frauenburg,  in  the  diocese  of  Ermeland.  For  three 
and  thirty  years  he  had  withdrawn  himself  from  the  world  and 
devoted  himself  to  the  consolidation  of  his  great  scheme  of  the 
solar  system.  He  made  its  blocks  eternal ;  and  even  to  those 
who  feared  it  and  desired  its  overthrow,  it  was  so  obviously 
strong  that  they  refrained  from  meddling  with  it.  In  the  last 
year  of  the  life  of  Copernicus  his  book  appeared.  It  is  said  that 
the  old  man  received  a  copy  of  it  a  few  days  before  his  death, 
and  then  departed  in  peace. 

The  Italian  philosopher  Giordano  Bruno  was  one  of  the 
earliest  converts  to  the  new  astronomy.  Taking  Lucretius 
'  Intellectual  Development  of  Europe,  p.  359. 


V 


286  JOHN  TYNDALL 

as  his  exemplar,  he  revived  the  notion  of  the  infinity  of  worlds ; 
and,  combining  with  it  the  doctrine  of  Copernicus,  reached  the 
sublime  generalization  that  the  fixed  stars  are  suns,  scattered 
numberless  through  space  and  accompanied  by  satellites,  which 
bear  the  same  relation  to  them  as  the  earth  does  to  our  sun,  or 
our  moon  to  our  earth.  This  was  an  expansion  of  transcendent 
import ;  but  Bruno  came  closer  than  this  to  our  present  line  of 
thought.  Struck  with  the  problem  of  the  generation  and  main- 
tenance of  organisms,  and  duly  pondering  it,  he  came  to  the  con- 
clusion that  nature  in  her  productions  does  not  imitate  the 
technic  of  man.  Her  process  is  one  of  unraveling  and  unfolding. 
The  infinity  of  forms  under  which  matter  appears  was  not  im- 
posed upon  it  by  an  external  artificer;  by  its  own  intrinsic 
force  and  virtue  it  brings  these  forms  forth.  Matter  is  not  the 
mere  naked,  empty  capacity  which  philosophers  have  pictured 
her  to  be,  but  the  universal  mother,  who  brings  forth  all  things 
as  the  fruit  of  her  own  womb. 

This  outspoken  man  was  originally  a  Dominican  monk.  He 
was  accused  of  heresy  and  had  to  fly,  seeking  refuge  in  Geneva, 
Paris,  England,  and  Germany.  In  1592  he  fell  into  the  hands  of 
the  Inquisition  at  Venice.  He  was  imprisoned  for  many  years, 
tried,  degraded,  excommunicated,  and  handed  over  to  the  civil 
power,  with  the  request  that  he  should  be  treated  gently  and 
"without  the  shedding  of  blood."  This  meant  that  he  was  to  be 
burned;  and  burned  accordingly  he  was,  on  February  16,  1600. 
To  escape  a  similar  fate,  Galileo,  thirty-three  years  afterward, 
abjured,  upon  his  knees  and  with  his  hand  on  the  Holy  Gospels, 
the  heliocentric  doctrine.^  After  Galileo  came  Kepler,  who  from 
his  German  home  defied  the  power  beyond  the  Alps.  He  traced 
out  from  preexisting  observations  the  laws  of  planetary  motion. 
The  problem  was  thus  prepared  for  Newton,  who  bound  those 
empirical  laws  together  by  the  principle  of  gravitation. 

During  the  Middle  Ages  the  doctrine  of  atoms  had  to  all 
appearance  vanished  from  discussion.  In  all  probability  it  held 
its  ground  among  sober-minded  and  thoughtful  men,  though 

1  The  theory  that  the  sun  is  the  center  of  our  planetary  system.  —  Editors. 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  287 

neither  the  Church  nor  the  world  was  prepared  to  hear  of  it  with 
tolerance.  Once,  in  the  year  1348,  it  received  distinct  expres- 
sion. But  retraction  by  compulsion  immediately  followed,  and 
thus  discouraged,  it  slumbered  till  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  it  was  revived  by  a  contemporary  of  Hobbes  and  Descartes, 
the  Pere  Gassendi. 

The  analytic  and  synthetic  tendencies  of  the  human  mind 
exhibit  themselves  throughout  history,  great  writers  ranging 
themselves  sometimes  on  the  one  side,  sometimes  on  the  other. 
Men  of  lofty  feelings,  and  minds  open  to  the  elevating  impres- 
sions produced  by  nature  as  a  whole,  whose  satisfaction,  there- 
fore, is  rather  ethical  than  logical,  have  leaned  to  the  synthetic 
side ;  while  the  analytic  harmonizes  best  with  the  more  precise 
and  more  mechanical  bias  which  seeks  the  satisfaction  of  the 
understanding.  Some  form  of  pantheism  was  usually  adopted 
by  the  one,  while  a  detached  Creator,  working  more  or  less  after 
the  manner  of  men,  was  often  assumed  by  the  other.^  Gassendi 
is  hardly  to  be  ranked  with  either.  Having  formerly  acknowl- 
edged God  as  the  first  great  cause,  he  immediately  drops  the 
idea,  applies  the  known  laws  of  mechanics  to  the  atoms,  and 
thence  deduces  all  vital  phenomena.  God,  who  created  earth 
and  water,  plants  and  animals,  produced  in  the  first  place  a 
definite  number  of  atoms,  which  constituted  the  seed  of  all  things. 
Then  began  that  series  of  combinations  and  decompositions 
which  goes  on  at  the  present  day,  and  which  will  continue  in 
the  future.  The  principle  of  every  change  resides  in  matter. 
In  artificial  productions  the  moving  principle  is  different  from 
the  material  worked  upon ;  but  in  nature  the  agent  works 
within,  being  the  most  active  and  mobile  part  of  the  material 
itself.  Thus  this  bold  ecclesiastic,  without  incurring  the  cen- 
sure of  the  Church  or  the  world,  contrives  to  outstrip  Mr.  Dar- 

1  Boyle's  model  of  the  universe  was  the  Strasburg  clock  with  an  outside 
artificer.     Goethe,  on  the  other  hand,  sang 

"Ihm  ziemt's  die  Welt  im  Innern  zu  bewegen, 
Natur  in  sich,  sich  in  Natur  zu  hegen.'" 

The  same  repugnance  to  the  clockmaker  conception  is  manifest  in  Carlyle. 


i88  JOHN  TYND.\LL 

win.  The  same  cast  of  mind  which  caused  him  to  detach  the 
Creator  from  his  universe  led  him  also  to  detach  the  soul  from 
the  body,  though  to  the  body  he  ascribes  an  influence  so  large 
as  to  render  the  soul  almost  unnecessary.  The  aberrations  of 
reason  were  in  his  view  an  affair  of  the  material  brain.  Mental 
disease  is  brain  disease;  but  then  the  immortal  reason  sits 
apart,  and  cannot  be  touched  by  the  disease.  The  errors  of 
madness  are  errors  of  the  instrument,  not  of  the  performer. 

It  may  be  more  than  a  mere  result  of  education,  connecting 
itself  probably  with  the  deeper  mental  structure  of  the  two  men, 
that  the  idea  of  Gassendi,  above  enunciated,  is  substantially  the 
same  as  that  expressed  by  Professor  Clerk-Maxwell  at  the  close 
of  the  very  noble  lecture  delivered  by  him  at  Bradford  last  year. 
According  to  both  philosophers,  the  atoms,  if  I  understand 
aright,  are  the  prepared  materials,  the  "manufactured  articles," 
which,  formed  by  the  skill  of  the  Highest,  produce  by  their  sub- 
sequent interaction  all  the  phenomena  of  the  material  world. 
There  seems  to  be  this  difference,  however,  between  Gassendi 
and  Maxwell.  The  one  postulates,  the  other  infers,  his  first 
cause.  In  his  manufactured  articles.  Professor  Maxwell  finds 
the  basis  of  an  induction  which  enables  him  to  scale  philosophic 
heights  considered  inaccessible  by  Kant,  and  to  take  the  logical 
step  from  the  atoms  to  their  Maker. 

The  atomic  doctrine,  in  whole  or  in  part,  was  entertained  by 
Bacon,  Descartes,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Newton,  Boyle,  and  their 
successors,  until  the  chemical  law  of  multiple  proportions  en- 
abled Dalton  to  confer  upon  it  an  entirely  new  significance.  In 
our  day  there  are  secessions  from  the  theory,  but  it  still  stands 
firm.  Only  a  year  or  two  ago  Sir  William  Thomson,  with  char- 
acteristic penetration,  sought  to  determine  the  sizes  of  the  atoms, 
or  rather  to  fix  the  limits  between  which  their  sizes  lie ;  while 
only  last  year  the  discourses  of  Williamson  and  Maxwell  illus- 
trated the  present  hold  of  the  doctrine  upon  the  foremost  scientific 
minds.  What  these  atoms,  self-moved  and  self-posited,  can 
and  cannot  accomplish  in  relation  to  life,  is  at  the  present  mo- 
ment the  subject  of  profound  scientific  thought.     I  doubt  the 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  289 

legitimacy  of  Maxwell's  logic ;  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  feel 
the  ethic  glow  with  which  his  lecture  concludes.  There  is, 
moreover,  a  Lucretian  grandeur  in  his  description  of  the  stead- 
fastness of  the  atoms:  "Natural  causes,  as  we  know,  are  at 
work,  which  tend  to  modify,  if  they  do  not  at  length  destroy, 
all  the  arrangements  and  dimensions  of  the  earth  and  the  whole 
solar  system.  But  though  in  the  course  of  ages  catastrophes 
have  occurred  and  may  yet  occur  in  the  heavens,  though  ancient 
systems  may  be  dissolved  and  new  systems  evolved  out  of  their 
ruins,  the  molecules  out  of  which  these  systems  are  built,  the 
foundation  stones  of  the  material  universe,  remain  unbroken 
and  unworn." 

Ninety  years  subsequent  to  Gassendi,  the  doctrine  of  bodily 
instruments,  as  it  may  be  called,  assumed  immense  importance 
in  the  hands  of  Bishop  Butler,  who,  in  his  famous  Analogy  of 
Religion,  developed  from  his  own  point  of  view,  and  with  con- 
summate sagacity,  a  similar  idea.  The  bishop  still  influences 
superior  minds ;  and  it  will  repay  us  to  dwell  for  a  moment  on 
his  views.  He  draws  the  sharpest  distinction  between  our  real 
selves  and  our  bodily  instruments.  He  does  not,  as  far  as  I 
remember,  use  the  word  soul,  possibly  because  the  term  was 
so  hackneyed  in  his  day,  as  it  had  been  for  many  generations 
previously.  But  he  speaks  of  "living  powers,"  "perceiving"  or 
"percipient  powers,"  "moving  agents,"  "ourselves,"  in  the 
same  sense  as  we  should  employ  the  term  soul.  He  dwells  upon 
the  fact  that  limbs  may  be  removed  and  mortal  diseases  assail 
the  body,  while  the  mind,  almost  up  to  the  moment  of  death, 
remains  clear.  He  refers  to  sleep  and  to  swoon,  where  the 
' '  living  powers ' '  are  suspended,  but  not  destroyed.  He  considers 
it  quite  as  easy  to  conceive  of  an  existence  out  of  our  bodies  as 
in  them ;  that  we  may  animate  a  succession  of  bodies,  the  dis- 
solution of  all  of  them  having  no  more  tendency  to  dissolve  our 
real  selves,  or  "deprive  us  of  living  faculties  —  the  faculties  of 
perception  and  action  —  than  the  dissolution  of  any  foreign 
matter  which  we  are  capable  of  receiving  impressions  from,  or 
making  use  of,  for  the  common  occasions  of  life."     This  is  the 


290  JOHN  TYNDALL 

key  of  the  bishop's  position  :  "Our  organized  bodies  are  no 
more  a  part  of  ourselves  than  any  other  matter  around  us." 
In  proof  of  this,  he  calls  attention  to  the  use  of  glasses,  which 
"prepare  objects"  for  the  "percipient  power"  exactly  as  the 
eye  does.  The  eye  itself  is  no  more  percipient  than  the  glass, 
and  is  quite  as  much  the  instrument  of  the  true  self,  and  also  as 
foreign  to  the  true  self,  as  the  glass  is.  "And  if  we  see  with  our 
eyes  only  in  the  same  manner  as  we  do  with  glasses,  the  like  may 
justly  be  concluded  from  analogy  of  all  our  senses." 

Lucretius,  as  you  are  aware,  reached  a  precisely  opposite  con- 
clusion ;  and  it  certainly  would  be  interesting,  if  not  profit- 
able, to  us  all,  to  hear  what  he  would  or  could  urge  in  opposition 
to  the  reasoning  of  the  bishop.  As  a  brief  discussion  of  the  point 
will  enable  us  to  see  the  bearings  of  an  important  question,  1 
will  here  permit  a  disciple  of  Lucretius  to  try  the  strength  of 
the  bishop's  position,  and  then  allow  the  bishop  to  retaliate, 
with  the  view  of  rolling  back,  if  he  can,  the  difficulty  upon  Lucre- 
tius, Each  shall  state  his  case  fully  and  frankly ;  and  you  shall 
be  umpire  between  them.  The  argument  might  proceed  in  this 
fashion : 

"Subjected  to  the  test  of  mental  presentation  (Vorskllung), 
your  views,  most  honored  prelate,  would  present  to  many  minds 
a  great,  if  not  an  insuperable,  difficulty.  You  speak  of  'living 
powers,'  'percipient  or  perceiving  powers,'  and  'ourselves;'  but 
can  you  form  a  mental  picture  of  any  one  of  these  apart  from  the 
organism  through  which  it  is  supposed  to  act?  Test  yourself 
honestly,  and  see  whether  you  possess  any  faculty  that  would 
enable  you  to  form  such  a  conception.  The  true  self  has  a  local 
habitation  in  each  of  us ;  thus  localized,  must  it  not  possess  a 
form  ?  If  so,  what  form  ?  Have  you  ever  for  a  moment  realized 
it  ?  When  a  leg  is  amputated,  the  body  is  divided  into  two  parts  ; 
is  the  true  self  in  both  of  them  or  in  one  ?  Thomas  Aquinas 
might  say  in  both ;  but  not  you,  for  you  appeal  to  the  conscious- 
ness associated  with  one  of  the  two  parts  to  prove  that  the  other 
is  foreign  matter.  Is  consciousness,  then,  a  necessary  element 
of  the  true  self  ?     If  so,  what  do  you  say  to  the  case  of  the  whole 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  291 

body  being  deprived  of  consciousness  ?  If  not,  then  on  what 
grounds  do  you  deny  any  portion  of  the  true  self  to  the  severed 
Hmb  ?  It  seems  very  singular  that,  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  of  your  admirable  book  (and  no  one  admires  its  sober 
strength  more  than  I  do),  you  never  once  mention  the  brain  or 
nervous  system.  You  begin  at  one  end  of  the  body,  and  show 
that  its  parts  may  be  removed  without  prejudice  to  the  perceiv- 
ing power.  What  if  you  begin  at  the  other  end,  and  remove, 
instead  of  the  leg,  the  brain  ?  The  body,  as  before,  is  divided 
into  two  parts ;  but  both  are  now  in  the  same  predicament,  and 
neither  can  be  appealed  to  to  prove  that  the  other  is  foreign 
matter.  Or,  instead  of  going  so  far  as  to  remove  the  brain  itself, 
let  a  certain  portion  of  its  bony  covering  be  removed,  and  let 
a  rhythmic  series  of  pressure  and  relaxations  of  pressure  be 
applied  to  the  soft  substance.  At  every  pressure  'the  facul- 
ties of  perception  and  of  action '  vanish ;  at  every  relaxation 
of  pressure  they  are  restored.  Where,  during  the  intervals  of 
pressure,  is  the  perceiving  power  ?  I  once  had  the  discharge  of 
a  Leyden  battery  passed  unexpectedly  through  me :  I  felt  noth- 
ing, but  was  simply  blotted  out  of  conscious  existence  for  a 
sensible  interval.  Where  was  my  true  self  during  that  interval  ? 
Men  who  have  recovered  from  lightning  stroke  have  been  much 
longer  in  the  same  state ;  and  indeed  in  cases  of  ordinary  con- 
cussion of  the  brain,  days  may  elapse  during  which  no  experience 
is  registered  in  consciousness.  Where  is  the  man  himself  during 
the  period  of  insensibility?  You  may  say  that  I  beg  the 
question  when  I  assume  the  man  to  have  been  unconscious,  that 
he  was  really  conscious  all  the  time,  and  has  simply  forgotten 
what  had  occurred  to  him.  In  reply  to  this,  I  can  only  say  that 
no  one  need  shrink  from  the  worst  tortures  that  superstition 
ever  invented  if  only  so  felt  and  so  remembered.  I  do  not  think 
your  theory  of  instruments  goes  at  all  to  the  bottom  of  the 
matter.  A  telegraph  operator  has  his  instruments,  by  means  of 
which  he  converses  with  the  world  ;  our  bodies  possess  a  nervous 
system,  which  plays  a  similar  part  between  the  perceiving  powers 
and  external  things.     Cut  the  wires  of  the  operator,  break  his 


292  JOHN  TYNDALL 

battery,  demagnetize  his  needle :  by  this  means  you  certainly 
sever  his  connection  with  the  world ;  but  inasmuch  as  these  are 
real  instruments,  their  destruction  does  not  touch  the  man  who 
uses  them.  The  operator  survives,  and  he  knows  that  he  sur- 
vives. What  is  it,  I  would  ask,  in  the  human  system  that  an- 
swers to  this  conscious  survival  of  the  operator  when  the  bat- 
tery of  the  brain  is  so  disturbed  as  to  produce  insensibility,  or 
when  it  is  destroyed  altogether  ? 

"  Another  consideration,  which  you  may  consider  slight,  presses 
upon  me  with  some  force.  The  brain  may  change  from  health 
to  disease,  and  through  such  a  change  the  most  exemplary  man 
may  be  converted  into  a  debauchee  or  a  murderer.  My  very 
noble  and  approved  good  master  had,  as  you  know,  threatenings 
of  lewdness  introduced  into  his  brain  by  his  jealous  wife's  philter ; 
and  sooner  than  permit  himself  to  run  even  the  risk  of  yielding 
to  these  base  promptings,  he  slew  himself.  How  could  the  hand 
of  Lucretius  have  been  thus  turned  against  himself  if  the  real 
Lucretius  remained  as  before  ?  Can  the  brain  or  can  it  not  act 
in  this  distempered  way  without  the  intervention  of  the  immor- 
tal reason  ?  If  it  can,  then  it  is  a  prime  mover  which  requires 
only  healthy  regulation  to  render  it  reasonably  self-acting,  and 
there  is  no  apparent  need  of  your  immortal  reason  at  all.  If  it 
cannot,  then  the  immortal  reason,  by  its  mischievous  activity 
in  operating  upon  a  broken  instrument,  must  have  the  credit 
of  committing  every  imaginable  extravagance  and  crime.  I 
think,  if  you  will  allow  me  to  say  so,  that  the  gravest  conse- 
quences are  likely  to  flow  from  your  estimate  of  the  body.  To 
regard  the  brain  as  you  would  a  staff  or  an  eyeglass  —  to  shut 
your  eyes  to  all  its  mystery,  to  the  perfect  correlation  that  reigns 
between  its  condition  and  our  consciousness,  to  the  fact  that  a 
slight  excess  or  defect  of  blood  in  it  produces  that  very  swoon 
to  which  you  refer,  and  that  in  relation  to  it  our  meat  and  drink 
and  air  and  exercise  have  a  perfectly  transcendental  value  and 
significance  —  to  forget  all  this  does,  I  think,  open  a  way  to 
innumerable  errors  in  our  habits  of  life,  and  may  possibly  in 
some  cases  initiate  and  foster  that  very  disease,  and  consequent 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  293 

mental  ruin,  which  a  wiser  appreciation  of  this  mysterious  or- 
gan would  have  avoided." 

I  can  imagine  the  bishop  thoughtful  after  hearing  this  argu- 
ment. He  was  not  the  man  to  allow  anger  to  mingle  with  the 
consideration  of  a  point  of  this  kind.  After  due  consideration, 
and  having  strengthened  himself  by  that  honest  contemplation 
of  the  facts  which  was  habitual  with  him,  and  which  includes 
the  desire  to  give  even  adverse  facts  their  due  weight,  I  can  sup- 
pose the  bishop  to  proceed  thus :  "  You  will  remember  that  in  the 
Analogy  of  Religion,  of  which  you  have  so  kindly  spoken,  I  did 
not  profess  to  prove  anything  absolutely,  and  that  I  over  and 
over  again  acknowledged  and  insisted  on  the  smallness  of  our 
knowledge,  or  rather  the  depth  of  our  ignorance,  as  regards  the 
whole  system  of  the  universe.  My  object  was  to  show  my 
deistical  friends  who  set  forth  so  eloquently  the  beauty  and  benef- 
icence of  Nature  and  the  Ruler  thereof,  while  they  had  nothing 
but  scorn  for  the  so-called  absurdities  of  the  Christian  scheme, 
that  they  were  in  no  better  condition  than  we  were,  and  that  for 
every  difficulty  they  found  upon  our  side,  quite  as  great  a  diffi- 
culty was  to  be  found  on  theirs.  I  will  now  with  your  per- 
mission adopt  a  similar  line  of  argument.  You  are  a  Lucretian, 
and  from  the  combination  and  separation  of  atoms  deduce  all  ter- 
restrial things,  including  organic  forms  and  their  phenomena. 
Let  me  tell  you  in  the  first  instance  how  far  I  am  prepared  to 
go  with  you.  I  admit  that  you  can  build  crystalline  forms  out 
of  this  play  of  molecular  force ;  that  the  diamond,  amethyst, 
and  snow  star  are  truly  wonderful  structures  which  are  thus  pro- 
duced. I  will  go  further,  and  acknowledge  that  even  a  tree  or 
flower  might  in  this  way  be  organized.  Nay,  if  you  can  show 
me  an  animal  without  sensation,  I  will  concede  to  you  that  it  also 
might  be  put  together  by  the  suitable  play  of  molecular  force. 

"Thus  far  our  way  is  clear,  but  now  comes  my  difficulty. 
Your  atoms  are  individually  without  sensation  ;  much  more  are 
they  without  intelligence.  May  I  ask  you,  then,  to  try  your 
hand  upon  this  problem  ?  Take  your  dead  hydrogen  atoms, 
your  dead  oxygen  atoms,  your  dead  carbon  atoms,  your  dead 


294  JOHN  TYNDALL 

nitrogen  atoms,  your  dead  phosphorus  atoms,  and  all  the  other 
atoms,  dead  as  grains  of  shot,  of  which  the  brain  is  formed. 
Imagine  them  separate  and  sensationless ;  observe  them  run- 
ning together  and  forming  all  imaginable  combinations.  This, 
as  a  purely  mechanical  process,  is  seeable  by  the  mind.  But  can 
you  see,  or  dream,  or  in  any  way  imagine,  how  out  of  that 
mechanical  act,  and  from  these  individually  dead  atoms,  sensa- 
tion, thought,  and  emotion  are  to  arise  ?  You  speak  of  the  diffi- 
culty of  mental  presentation  in  my  case ;  is  it  less  in  yours  ?  I 
am  not  all  bereft  of  this  Vorstellungs-kraft^  of  which  you  speak. 
I  can  follow  a  particle  of  musk  until  it  reaches  the  olfactory 
nerve;  I  can  follow  the  waves  of  sound  until  their  tremors 
reach  the  water  of  the  labyrinth,  and  set  the  otoliths  and 
Corti's  fibers  in  motion ;  I  can  also  visualize  the  waves  of  ether 
as  they  cross  the  eye  and  hit  the  retina.  Nay,  more,  I  am  able 
to  follow  up  to  the  central  organ  the  motion  thus  imparted  at 
the  periphery,  and  to  see  in  idea  the  very  molecules  of  the  brain 
thrown  into  tremors.  My  insight  is  not  baffled  by  these  physical 
processes.  What  baffles  me,  what  I  find  unimaginable,  tran- 
scending every  faculty  I  possess  —  transcending,  I  humbly  sub- 
mit, every  faculty  you  possess  —  is  the  notion  that  out  of  those 
physical  tremors  you  can  extract  things  so  utterly  incongruous 
with  them  as  sensation,  thought,  and  emotion.  You  may  say, 
or  think,  that  this  issue  of  consciousness  from  the  clash  of 
atoms  is  not  more  incongruous  than  the  flash  of  light  from  the 
union  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen.  But  I  beg  to  say  that  it  is. 
For  such  incongruity  as  the  flash  possesses  is  that  which  I  now 
force  upon  your  attention.  The  flash  is  an  affair  of  consciousness, 
the  objective  counterpart  of  which  is  a  vibration.  It  is  a  flash 
only  by  our  interpretation.  You  are  the  cause  of  the  apparent 
incongruity ;  and  you  are  the  thing  that  puzzles  me.  I  need  not 
remind  you  that  the  great  Leibnitz  felt  the  difficulty  which  I  feel, 
and  that  to  get  rid  of  this  monstrous  deduction  of  life  from  death 
he  displaced  your  atoms  by  his  monads,  which  were  more  or 
less  perfect  mirrors  of  the  universe,  and  out  of  the  summation 
^  Power  of  imagining.  —  Editors. 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  295 

and  integration  of  which  he  supposed  all  the  phenomena  of  lile 
—  sentient,  intellectual,  and  emotional  —  to  arise. 

"Your  difi&culty,  then,  as  I  see  you  are  ready  to  admit,  is 
quite  as  great  as  mine.  You  cannot  satisfy  the  human  under- 
standing in  its  demand  for  logical  continuity  between  molecular 
processes  and  the  phenomena  of  consciousness.  This  is  a  rock 
on  which  materialism  must  inevitably  split  whenever  it  pretends 
to  be  a  complete  philosophy  of  life.  What  is  the  moral,  my 
Lucretian  ?  You  and  I  are  not  likely  to  indulge  in  ill  temper  in 
the  discussion  of  these  great  topics,  where  we  see  so  much  room 
for  honest  differences  of  opinion.  But  there  are  people  of  less  wit 
or  more  bigotry  (I  say  it  with  humility)  on  both  sides,  who  are 
ever  ready  to  mingle  anger  and  vituperation  with  such  discus- 
sions. There  are,  for  example,  writers  of  note  and  influence 
at  the  present  day  who  are  not  ashamed  to  assume  the  'deep 
personal  sin'  of  a  great  logician  to  be  the  cause  of  his  unbelief 
in  a  theologic  dogma.  And  there  are  others  who  hold  that  we, 
who  cherish  our  noble  Bible,  wrought  as  it  has  been  into  the 
constitution  of  our  forefathers,  and  by  inheritance  into  us,  must 
necessarily  be  hypocritical  and  insincere.  Let  us  disavow  and 
discountenance  such  people,  cherishing  the  unswerving  faith 
that  what  is  good  and  true  in  both  our  arguments  will  be  pre- 
served for  the  benefit  of  humanity,  while  all  that  is  bad  or 
false  will  disappear." 

It  is  worth  remarking  that  in  one  respect  the  bishop  was  a 
product  of  his  age.  Long  previous  to  his  day  the  nature  of  the 
soul  had  been  so  favorite  and  general  a  topic  of  discussion  that 
when  the  students  of  the  University  of  Paris  wished  to  know  the 
leanings  of  a  new  professor,  they  at  once  requested  him  to  lecture 
upon  the  soul.  About  the  time  of  Bishop  Butler  the  question 
was  not  only  agitated,  but  extended.  It  was  seen  by  the  clear- 
witted  men  who  entered  this  arena  that  many  of  their  best  argu- 
ments applied  equally  to  brutes  and  men.  The  bishop's  argu- 
ments were  of  this  character.  He  saw  it,  admitted  it,  accepted 
the  consequences,  and  boldly  embraced  the  whole  animal  world 
in  his  scheme  of  immortality. 


296  JOHN   TYNDALL 

Bishop  Butler  accepted  with  unwavering  trust  the  chronology 
of  the  Old  Testament,  describing  it  as  "confirmed  by  the  natural 
and  civil  history  of  the  world,  collected  from  common  historians, 
from  the  state  of  the  earth,  and  from  the  late  inventions  of  arts 
and  sciences."  These  words  mark  progress ;  they  must  seem 
somewhat  hoary  to  the  bishop's  successors  of  to-day.^  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  inform  you  that  since  his  time  the  domain 
of  the  naturalist  has  been  immensely  extended  —  the  whole  sci- 
ence of  geology,  with  its  astounding  revelations  regarding  the 
life  of  the  ancient  earth,  having  been  created.  The  rigidity  of 
old  conceptions  has  been  relaxed,  the  public  mind  being  rendered 
gradually  tolerant  of  the  idea  that  not  for  six  thousand,  nor  for 
sixty  thousand,  nor  for  six  thousand  thousand,  but  for  aeons  em- 
bracing untold  millions  of  years,  this  earth  has  been  the  theater 
of  life  and  death.  The  riddle  of  the  rocks  has  been  read  by  the 
geologist  and  paleontologist,  from  sub-Cambrian  depths  to  the 
deposits  thickening  over  the  sea  bottoms  of  to-day.  And  upon 
the  leaves  of  that  stone  book  are,  as  you  know,  stamped  the  char- 
acters, plainer  and  surer  than  those  formed  by  the  ink  of  history, 
which  carry  the  mind  back  into  abysses  of  past  time  compared 
with  which  the  periods  which  satisfied  Bishop  Butler  cease  to 
have  a  visual  angle.  Everybody  now  knows  this ;  all  men  admit 
it ;  still,  when  they  were  first  broached,  these  verities  of  science 
found  loud-tongued  denunciators,  who  proclaimed  not  only  their 
baselessness  considered  scientifically,  but  their  immorality  con- 
sidered as  questions  of  ethics  and  religion  :  the  Book  of  Genesis 
had  stated  the  question  in  a  different  fashion ;  and  science  must 
necessarily  go  to  pieces  when  it  clashed  with  this  authority. 
And  as  the  seed  of  the  thistle  produces  a  thistle,  and  nothing  else, 
so  these  objectors  scatter  their  germs  abroad,  and  reproduce  their 
kind,  ready  to  play  again  the  part  of  their  intellectual  progeni- 
tors, to  show  the  same  virulence,  the  same  ignorance,  to  achieve 
for  a  time  the  same  success,  and  finally  to  suffer  the  same  inexor- 

'  Only  to  some ;  for  there  are  dignitaries  who  even  now  speak  of  the 
earth's  rocky  crust  as  so  much  building  material  prepared  for  man  at  the 
Creation.     Surely  it  is  time  that  this  loose  language  should  cease. 


THE   BELFAST   ADDRESS  297 

able  defeat.  Sure  the  time  must  come  at  last  when  human  na- 
ture in  its  entirety,  whose  legitimate  demands  it  is  admitted 
science  alone  cannot  satisfy,  will  find  interpreters  and  expositors 
of  a  different  stamp  from  those  rash  and  ill-informed  persons  who 
have  been  hitherto  so  ready  to  hurl  themselves  against  every  new 
scientific  revelation,  lest  it  should  endanger  what  they  are  pleased 
to  consider  theirs. 

The  lode  of  discovery  once  struck,  those  petrified  forms  in 
which  life  was  at  one  time  active  increased  to  multitudes  and  de- 
manded classification.  The  general  fact  soon  became  evident 
that  none  but  the  simplest  forms  of  life  lie  lowest  down,  that  as 
we  climb  higher  and  higher  among  the  superimposed  strata  more 
perfect  forms  appear.  The  change,  however,  from  form  to  form 
was  not  continuous,  but  by  steps,  some  small,  some  great.  "A 
section,"  says  Mr.  Huxley,  "a  hundred  feet  thick  will  exhibit  at 
different  heights  a  dozen  species  of  ammonite,  none  of  which 
passes  beyond  its  particular  zone  of  limestone,  or  clay,  into  the 
zone  below  it,  or  into  that  above  it."  In  the  presence  of  such 
facts  it  was  not  possible  to  avoid  the  question.  Have  these 
forms,  showing,  though  in  broken  stages  and  with  many  irregu- 
larities, this  unmistakable  general  advance,  been  subjected  to 
no  continuous  law  of  growth  or  variation  ?  Had  our  education 
been  purely  scientific,  or  had  it  been  sufficiently  detached  from 
influences  which,  however  ennobling  in  another  domain,  have 
always  proved  hindrances  and  delusions  when  introduced  as 
factors  into  the  domain  of  physics,  the  scientific  mind  never 
could  have  swerved  from  the  search  for  a  law  of  growth,  or  al- 
lowed itself  to  accept  the  anthropomorphism  which  regarded  each 
successive  stratum  as  a  kind  of  mechanic's  bench  for  the  manu- 
facture of  new  species  out  of  all  relation  to  the  old. 

Biased,  however,  by  their  previous  education,  the  great  major- 
ity of  naturalists  invoked  a  special  creative  act  to  account  for 
the  appearance  of  each  new  group  of  organisms.  Doubtless 
there  were  numbers  who  were  clear-headed  enough  to  see  that 
this  was  no  explanation  at  all  ;  that  in  point  of  fact  it  was  an 
attempt,  by  the  introduction  of  a  greater  difficulty,  to  account 


298  JOHN  TYNDALL 

for  a  less.  But  having  nothing  to  offer  in  the  way  of  explana- 
tion, they  for  the  most  part  held  their  peace.  Still  the  thoughts 
of  reflecting  men  naturally  and  necessarily  simmered  round  the 
question.  De  Maillet,  a  contemporary  of  Newton,  has  been 
brought  into  notice  by  Professor  Huxley  as  one  who  "had  a  no- 
tion of  the  modifiability  of  living  forms."  In  my  frequent 
conversations  with  him,  the  late  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie,  a  man  of 
highly  philosophic  mind,  often  drew  my  attention  to  the  fact 
that,  as  early  as  1794,  Charles  Darwin's  grandfather  was  the 
pioneer  of  Charles  Darwin.  In  1801,  and  in  subsequent  years, 
the  celebrated  Lamarck,  who  produced  so  profound  an  impres- 
sion on  the  public  mind  through  the  vigorous  exposition  of  his 
views  by  the  author  of  Vestiges  of  Creation,  endeavored  to 
show  the  development  of  species  out  of  changes  of  habit  and  ex- 
ternal condition.  In  18 13  Dr.  Wells,  the  founder  of  our  present 
theory  of  dew,  read  before  the  Royal  Society  a  paper  in  which, 
to  use  the  words  of  Mr.  Darwin,  "he  distinctly  recognizes  the 
principle  of  natural  selection;  and  this  is  the  first  recognition 
that  has  been  indicated."  The  thoroughness  and  skill  with 
which  Wells  pursued  his  work,  and  the  obvious  independence 
of  his  character,  rendered  him  long  ago  a  favorite  with  me ;  and 
it  gave  me  the  liveliest  pleasure  to  alight  upon  this  additional 
testimony  to  his  penetration.  Professor  Grant,  Mr.  Patrick 
Matthew,  von  Buch,  the  author  of  the  Vestiges,  D'Halloy, 
and  others,^  by  the  enunciation  of  views  more  or  less  clear  and 
correct,  showed  that  the  question  had  been  fermenting  long 
prior  to  the  year  1858,  when  Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr.  Wallace  simul- 
taneously, but  independently,  placed  their  closely  concurrent 
views  upon  the  subject  before  the  Linnaean  Society. 

These  papers  were  followed  in  1859  by  the  publication  of  the 
first  edition  of  The  Origin  of  Species.  All  great  things  come 
slowly  to  the  birth.     Copernicus,  as  I  informed  you,  pondered 

1  In  1855  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  (Principles  of  Psychology,  2d  ed.,  vol.  i, 
p.  465)  expressed  "  the  belief  that  Hfe  under  all  its  forms  has  arisen  by  an  un- 
broken evohition,  and  through  the  instrumentality  of  what  are  called  nat- 
ural causes." 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  299 

his  great  work  for  thirty-three  years.  Newton  for  nearly  twenty 
years  kept  the  idea  of  gravitation  before  his  mind ;  for  twenty 
years  also  he  dwelt  upon  his  discovery  of  fluxions,  and  doubtless 
would  have  continued  to  make  it  the  object  of  his  private  thought 
had  he  not  found  that  Leibnitz  was  upon  his  track.  Darwin  for 
two  and  twenty  years  pondered  the  problem  of  the  origin  of 
species,  and  doubtless  he  would  have  continued  to  do  so  had  he 
not  found  Wallace  upon  his  track.^  A  concentrated  but  full  and 
powerful  epitome  of  his  labors  was  the  consequence.  The  book 
was  by  no  means  an  easy  one ;  and  probably  not  one  in  every 
score  of  those  who  then  attacked  it  had  read  its  pages  through,  or 
was  competent  to  grasp  their  significance  if  he  had.  I  do  not 
say  this  merely  to  discredit  them ;  for  there  were  in  those  days 
some  really  eminent  scientific  men,  entirely  raised  above  the  heat 
of  popular  prejudice,  willing  to  accept  any  conclusion  that  science 
had  to  offer,  provided  it  was  duly  backed  by  fact  and  argument, 
and  who  entirely  mistook  Mr.  Darwin's  views.  In  fact,  the  work 
needed  an  expounder ;  and  it  found  one  in  Mr.  Huxley.  I  know 
nothing  more  admirable  in  the  way  of  scientific  exposition  than 
those  early  articles  of  his  on  the  origin  of  species.  He  swept  the 
curve  of  discussion  through  the  really  significant  points  of  the 
subject,  enriched  his  exposition  with  profound  original  remarks 
and  reflections,  often  summing  up  in  a  single  pithy  sentence  an 
argument  which  a  less  compact  mind  would,  have  spread  over 
pages.  But  there  is  one  impression  made  by  the  book  itself 
which  no  exposition  of  it,  however  luminous,  can  convey;  and 
that  is  the  impression  of  the  vast  amount  of  labor,  both  of  ob- 
servation and  of  thought,  implied  in  its  production.  Let  us 
glance  at  its  principles. 

It  is  conceded  on  all  hands  that  what  are  called  varieties  are 
continually  produced.  The  rule  is  probably  without  exception. 
No  chick  and  no  child  is  in  all  respects  and  particulars  the  coun- 
terpart of  its  brother  or  sister ;  and  in  such  differences  we  have 
"variety"  incipient.     No  naturalist  could  tell  how  far  this  varia- 

1  The  behavior  of  Mr.  Wallace  in  relation  to  this  subject  has  been  dignified 
in  the  highest  degree. 


300  JOHN   TYNDALL 

tion  could  be  carried ;  but  the  great  mass  of  them  held  that  never 
by  any  amount  of  internal  or  external  change,  nor  by  the  mixture 
of  both,  could  the  offspring  of  the  same  progenitor  so  far  deviate 
from  each  other  as  to  constitute  different  species.  The  function 
of  the  experimental  philosopher  is  to  combine  the  conditions  of 
nature  and  to  produce  her  results ;  and  this  was  the  method  of 
Darwin.^  He  made  himself  acquainted  with  what  could,  without 
any  manner  of  doubt,  be  done  in  the  way  of  producing  variation. 
He  associated  himself  with  pigeon  fanciers  —  bought,  begged, 
kept,  and  observed  every  breed  that  he  could  obtain.  Though 
derived  from  a  common  stock,  the  diversities  of  these  pigeons 
were  such  that  "a  score  of  them  might  be  chosen  which,  if  shown 
to  an  ornithologist,  and  he  were  told  that  they  were  wild  birds, 
would  certainly  be  ranked  by  him  as  well-defined  species."  The 
simple  principle  which  guides  the  pigeon  fancier,  as  it  does  the 
cattle  breeder,  is  the  selection  of  some  variety  that  strikes  his 
fancy,  and  the  propagation  of  this  variety  by  inheritance.  With 
his  eye  still  upon  the  particular  appearance  which  he  wishes  to 
exaggerate,  he  selects  it  as  it  reappears  in  successive  broods,  and 
thus  adds  increment  to  increment  until  an  astonishing  amount 
of  divergence  from  the  parent  type  is  effected.  Man  in  this  case 
does  not  produce  the  elements  of  the  variation.  He  simply  ob- 
serves them,  and  by  selection  adds  them  together  until  the  re- 
quired result  has  been  obtained.  "No  man,"  says  Mr.  Darwin, 
"  would  ever  try  to  make  a  fan  tail  till  he  saw  a  pigeon  with  a  tail 
developed  in  some  slight  degree  in  an  unusual  manner,  or  a 
pouter  until  he  saw  a  pigeon  with  a  crop  of  unusual  size."  Thus 
nature  gives  the  hint,  man  acts  upon  it,  and  by  the  law  of  inherit- 
ance exaggerates  the  deviation. 

Having  thus  satisfied  himself  by  indubitable  facts  that  the  or- 
ganization of  an  animal  or  of  a  plant  (for  precisely  the  same 
treatment  applies  to  plants)  is  to  some  extent  plastic,  he  passes 
from  variation  under  domestication  to  variation  under  nature. 

1  The  first  step  only  toward  experimental  demonstration  has  been  taken. 
Experiments  now  begun  might,  a  couple  of  centuries  hence,  furnish  data  of 
incalculable  value^  which  ought  to  be  supplied  to  the  science  of  the  future. 


THE  BELFAST  ADDRESS  301 

Hitherto  we  have  dealt  with  the  adding  together  of  small  changes 
by  the  conscious  selection  of  man.  Can  nature  thus  select  ? 
Mr.  Darwin's  answer  is,  "Assuredly  she  can."  The  number  of 
living  things  produced  is  far  in  excess  of  the  number  that  can  be 
supported;  hence  at  some  period  or  other  of  their  lives  there 
must  be  a  struggle  for  existence ;  and  what  is  the  infallible  result  ? 
If  one  organism  were  a  perfect  copy  of  the  other  in  regard  to 
strength,  skill,  and  agility,  external  conditions  would  decide. 
But  this  is  not  the  case.  Here  we  have  the  fact  of  variety  offer- 
ing itself  to  nature,  as  in  the  former  instance  it  offered  itself  to 
man ;  and  those  varieties  which  are  least  competent  to  cope  with 
surrounding  conditions  will  infallibly  give  way  to  those  that  are 
competent.  To  use  a  familiar  proverb,  the  weakest  comes  to 
the  wall.  But  the  triumphant  fraction  again  breeds  to  over- 
production, transmitting  the  qualities  which  secured  its  mainte- 
nance, but  transmitting  them  in  different  degrees.  The  struggle 
for  food  again  supervenes,  and  those  to  whom  the  favorable 
quality  has  been  transmitted  in  excess  will  assuredly  triumph. 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  we  have  here  the  addition  of  increments 
favorable  to  the  individual  still  more  rigorously  carried  out  than 
in  the  case  of  domestication ;  for  not  only  are  unfavorable  speci- 
mens not  selected  by  nature,  but  they  are  destroyed.  This  is 
what  Mr.  Darwin  calls  "natural  selection,"  which  "acts  by  the 
preservation  and  accumulation  of  small  inherited  modifications, 
each  profitable  to  the  preserved  being."  With  this  idea  he  in- 
terpenetrates and  leavens  the  vast  store  of  facts  that  he  and 
others  have  collected.  We  cannot,  without  shutting  our  eyes 
through  fear  or  prejudice,  fail  to  see  that  Darwin  is  here  deahng, 
not  with  imaginary,  but  with  true,  causes ;  nor  can  we  fail  to 
discern  what  vast  modifications  may  be  produced  by  natural 
selection  in  periods  sufficiently  long.  Each  individual  increment 
may  resemble  what  mathematicians  call  a  "differential"  (a 
quantity  indefinitely  small) ;  but  definite  and  great  changes  may 
obviously  be  produced  by  the  integration  of  these  infinitesimal 
quantities  through  practically  infinite  time. 

If  Darwin,  like  Bruno,  rejects  the  notion  of  creative  power 


302  JOHN  TYNDALL 

acting  after  human  fashion,  it  certainly  is  not  because  he  is  im-^ 
acquainted  with  the  numberless  exquisite  adaptations  on  which 
this  notion  of  a  supernatural  artificer  has  been  founded.  His 
book  is  a  repository  of  the  most  startUng  facts  of  this  description. 
Take  the  marvelous  observation  which  he  cites  from  Dr.  Criiger, 
where  a  bucket  with  an  aperture,  serving  as  a  spout,  is  formed  in 
an  orchid.  Bees  visit  the  flower :  in  eager  search  of  material  for 
their  combs  they  push  each  other  into  the  bucket,  the  drenched 
ones  escaping  from  their  involuntary  bath  by  the  spout.  Here 
they  rub  their  backs  against  the  viscid  stigma  of  the  flower  and 
obtain  glue ;  then  against  the  pollen  masses,  which  are  thus 
stuck  to  the  back  of  the  bee  and  carried  away.  "When  the  bee, 
thus  provided,  flies  to  another  flower,  or  to  the  same  flower  a 
second  time,  and  is  pushed  by  its  comrades  into  the  bucket,  and 
then  crawls  out  by  the  passage,  the  pollen  mass  upon  its  back 
necessarily  comes  first  into  contact  with  the  viscid  stigma," 
which  takes  up  the  pollen ;  and  this  is  how  that  orchid  is  ferti- 
lized. Or  take  this  other  case  of  the  Catasetuni.  "Bees  visit 
these  flowers  in  order  to  gnaw  the  labellum  ;  on  doing  this  they 
inevitably  touch  a  long,  tapering,  sensitive  projection.  This, 
when  touched,  transmits  a  sensation  or  vibration  to  a  certain 
membrane,  which  is  instantly  ruptured,  setting  free  a  spring,  by 
which  the  pollen  mass  is  shot  forth  like  an  arrow  in  the  right 
'direction,  and  adheres  by  its  \dscid  extremity  to  the  back  of  the 
bee."     In  this  way  the  fertilizing  pollen  is  spread  abroad. 

It  is  the  mind  thus  stored  with  the  choicest  materials  of  the 
teleologist  that  rejects  teleology, ^  seeking  to  refer  these  wonders 
to  natural  causes.  They  illustrate,  according  to  him,  the  method 
of  nature,  not  the  "  technic  "  of  a  manlike  artificer.  The  beauty 
of  flowers  is  due  to  natural  selection.  Those  that  distinguish 
themselves  by  vividly  contrasting  colors  from  the  surrounding 
green  leaves  are  most  readily  seen,  most  frequently  visited  by 
insects,  most  often  fertilized,  and  hence  most  favored  by  natural 
selection.  Colored  berries  also  readily  attract  the  attention  of 
birds  and  beasts,  which  feed  upon  them,  and  spread  their  manured 
1  The  belief  that  all  things  exist  for  a  definite  purpose.  — Editors. 


THE  BELFAST  ADDRESS  303 

seeds  abroad,  thus  giving  trees  and  shrubs  possessing  such  berries 
a  greater  chance  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

With  profound  analytic  and  synthetic  skill,  Mr.  Darwin  in- 
vestigates the  cell-making  instinct  of  the  hive  bee.     His  method 
of  dealing  with  it  is  representative.     He  falls  back  from  the  more 
perfectly  to  the  less  perfectly  developed  instinct  —  from  the 
hive  bee  to  the  bumblebee,  which  uses  its  own  cocoon  as  a  comb, 
and  to  classes  of  bees  of  intermediate  skill,  endeavoring  to  show 
how  the  passage  might  be  gradually  made  from  the  lowest  to  the 
highest.     The  saving  of  wax  is  the  most  important  point  in  the 
economy  of  bees.    Twelve  to  fifteen  pounds  of  dry  sugar  are  said 
to  be  needed  for  the  secretion  of  a  single  pound  of  wax.     The 
quantities  of  nectar  necessary  for  the  wax  must  therefore  be  vast ; 
and  every  improvement  of  constructive  instinct  which  results  in 
the  saving  of  wax  is  a  direct  profit  to  the  insect's  life.     The  time 
that  would  otherwise  be  devoted  to  the  making  of  wax  is  now 
devoted  to  the  gathering  and  storing  of  honey  for  winter  food. 
He  passes  from  the  bumblebee  with  its  rude  cells,  through  the 
Melipona  with  its  more  artistic  cells,  to  the  hive  bee  with  its 
astonishing  architecture.     The  bees  place  themselves  at  equal 
distances  apart  upon  the  wax,  sweep  and  excavate  equal  spheres 
round  the  selected  points.     The  spheres  intersect,  and  the  planes 
of  intersection  are  built  up  with  thin  laminae.     Hexagonal  cells 
are  thus  formed.     This  mode  of  treating  such  questions  is,  as  I 
have  said,  representative.     He  habitually  retires  from  the  more 
perfect    and    complex  to  the    less  perfect  and  simple,    carries 
you  with  him  through  stages  of  perfecting,  adds  increment  to 
increment  of  infinitesimal  change,  and  in  this  way  gradually 
breaks  down  your  reluctance  to  admit  that  the  exquisite  climax 
of  the  whole  could  be  a  result  of  natural  selection. 

Mr,  Darwin  shirks  no  difficulty ;  and,  saturated  as  the  subject 
was  with  his  own  thought,  he  must  have  known,  better  than  his 
critics,  the  weakness  as  well  as  the  strength  of  his  theory.  This 
of  course  would  be  of  little  avail  were  his  object  a  temporary 
dialectic  victory  instead  of  the  establishment  of  a  truth  which  he 
means  to  be  everlasting.     But  he  takes  no  pains  to  disguise  the 


304  JOHN  TYNDALL 

weakness  he  has  discerned ;  nay,  he  takes  every  pains  to  bring 
it  into  the  strongest  Hght.  His  vast  resources  enable  him  to  cope 
with  objections  started  by  himself  and  others,  so  as  to  leave  the 
final  impression  upon  the  reader's  mind  that,  if  they  be  not  com- 
pletely answered,  they  certainly  are  not  fatal.  Their  negative 
force  being  thus  destroyed,  you  are  free  to  be  influenced  by  the 
vast  positive  mass  of  evidence  he  is  able  to  bring  before  you. 
This  largeness  of  knowledge  and  readiness  of  resource  render  Mr. 
Darwin  the  most  terrible  of  antagonists.  Accomplished  natural- 
ists have  leveled  heavy  and  sustained  criticisms  against  him  — 
not  always  with  the  view  of  fairly  weighing  his  theory,  but  with 
the  express  intention  of  exposing  its  weak  points  only.  This 
does  not  irritate  him.  He  treats  every  objection  with  a  soberness 
and  thoroughness  which  even  Bishop  Butler  might  be  proud  to 
imitate,  surrounding  each  fact  with  its  appropriate  detail,  plac- 
ing it  in  its  proper  relations,  and  usually  giving  it  a  significance 
which,  as  long  as  it  was  kept  isolated,  failed  to  appear.  This 
is  done  without  a  trace  of  ill-temper.  He  moves  over  the  sub- 
ject with  the  passionless  strength  of  a  glacier ;  and  the  grinding 
of  the  rocks  is  not  always  without  a  counterpart  in  the  logical 
pulverization  of  the  objector.  But  though  in  handling  this 
mighty  theme  all  passion  has  been  stilled,  there  is  an  emotion  of 
the  intellect  incident  to  the  discernment  of  new  truth  which 
often  colors  and  warms  the  pages  of  Mr.  Darwin.  His  success 
has  been  great ;  and  this  implies  not  only  the  solidity  of  his  work, 
but  the  preparedness  of  the  public  mind  for  such  a  revelation. 
On  this  head  a  remark  of  Agassiz  impressed  me  more  than  any- 
thing else.  Sprung  from  a  race  of  theologians,  this  celebrated 
man  combated  to  the  last  the  theory  of  natural  selection.  One 
of  the  many  times  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  him  in  the 
United  States  was  at  Mr.  Winthrop's  beautiful  residence  at 
Brookline,  near  Boston.  Rising  from  luncheon,  we  all  halted 
as  if  by  a  common  impulse  in  front  of  a  v/indow,  and  continued 
there  a  discussion  which  had  been  started  at  table.  The  maple 
was  in  its  autumn  glory ;  and  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  scene 
outside  seemed,  in  my  case,  to  interpenetrate  without  disturb- 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  305 

ance  the  intellectual  action.  Earnestly,  almost  sadly,  Agassiz 
turned  and  said  to  the  gentlemen  standing  round  :  "  I  confess  that 
I  was  not  prepared  to  see  this  theory  received  as  it  has  been  by 
the  best  intellects  of  our  time.  Its  success  is  greater  than  I 
could  have  thought  possible." 

In  our  day  great  generalizations  have  been  reached.  The 
theory  of  the  origin  of  species  is  but  one  of  them.  Another,  of 
still  wider  grasp  and  more  radical  significance,  is  the  doctrine 
of  the  Conservation  of  Energy,  the  ultimate  philosophical  issues 
of  which  are  as  yet  but  dimly  seen  —  that  doctrine  which  "  binds 
nature  fast  in  fate"  to  an  extent  not  hitherto  recognized,  exact- 
ing from  every  antecedent  its  equivalent  consequent,  from  every 
consequent  its  equivalent  antecedent,  and  bringing  vital  as  well 
as  physical  phenomena  under  the  dominion  of  that  law  of  causal 
connection  which,  as  far  as  the  human  understanding  has  yet 
pierced,  asserts  itself  everywhere  in  nature.  Long  in  advance 
of  all  definite  experiment  upon  the  subject,  the  constancy  and 
indestructability  of  matter  had  been  affirmed ;  and  all  subse- 
quent experience  justified  the  affirmation.  Later  researches  ex- 
tended the  attribute  of  indestructibility  to  force.  This  idea, 
applied  in  the  first  instance  to  inorganic,  rapidly  embraced  or- 
ganic, nature.  The  vegetable  world,  though  drawing  almost  all 
its  nutriment  from  invisible  sources,  was  proved  incompetent  to 
generate  anew  either  matter  or  force.  Its  matter  is  for  the  most 
part  transmuted  air ;  its  force  transformed  solar  force.  The 
animal  world  was  proved  to  be  equally  uncreative,  all  its  motive 
energies  being  referred  to  the  combustion  of  its  food.  The  ac- 
tivity of  each  animal  as  a  whole  was  proved  to  be  the  transferred 
activities  of  its  molecules.  The  muscles  were  shown  to  be  stores 
of  mechanical  force,  potential  until  unlocked  by  the  nerves,  and 
then  resulting  in  muscular  contractions.  The  speed  at  which 
messages  fly  to  and  fro  along  the  nerves  was  determined,  and 
found  to  be,  not,  as  had  been  previously  supposed,  equal  to  that 
of  light  or  electricity,  but  less  than  the  speed  of  a  flying  eagle. 

This  was  the  work  of  the  physicist ;  then  came  the  conquests 
of  the  comparative  anatomist  and  physiologist,  revealing  the 


3o6  JOHN   TYNDALL 

structure  of  every  animal,  and  the  function  of  every  organ  in  the 
whole  biological  series,  from  the  lowest  zoophyte  up  to  man. 
The  nervous  system  had  been  made  the  object  of  profound  and 
continued  study,  the  wonderful,  and  at  bottom  entirely  mysteri- 
ous, controlling  power  which  it  exercises  over  the  whole  organism, 
physical  and  mental,  being  recognized  more  and  more.  Thought 
could  not  be  kept  back  from  a  subject  so  profoundly  suggestive. 
Besides  the  physical  life  dealt  with  by  Mr.  Darwin,  there  is  a 
psychical  life  presenting  similar  gradations,  and  asking  equally 
for  a  solution.  How  are  the  different  grades  and  orders  of  mind 
to  be  accoimted  for  ?  What  is  the  principle  of  growth  of  that 
mysterious  power  which  on  our  planet  culminates  in  Reason? 
These  are  questions  which,  though  not  thrusting  themselves  so 
forcibly  upon  the  attention  of  the  general  public,  had  not  only 
occupied  many  reflecting  minds,  but  had  been  formally  broached 
by  one  of  them  before  the  Origin  of  Species  appeared. 

With  the  mass  of  materials  furnished  by  the  physicist  and 
physiologist  in  his  hands,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  twenty  years 
ago,  sought  to  graft  upon  this  basis  a  system  of  psychology ;  and 
two  years  ago  a  second  and  greatly  amplified  edition  of  his  work 
appeared.  Those  who  have  occupied  themselves  with  the  beau- 
tifvd  experiments  of  Plateau  will  remember  that  when  two  spher- 
ules of  olive  oil,  suspended  in  a  mixture  of  alcohol  and  water  of 
the  same  density  as  the  oil,  are  brought  together,  they  do  not  im- 
mediately unite.  Something  like  a  pellicle  appears  to  be  formed 
around  the  drops,  the  rupture  of  which  is  immediately  followed 
by  the  coalescence  of  the  globules  into  one.  There  are  organisms 
whose  vital  actions  are  almost  as  purely  physical  as  that  of  these 
drops  of  oil.  They  come  into  contact  and  fuse  themselves  thus 
together.  From  such  organisms  to  others  a  shade  higher,  and 
from  these  to  others  a  shade  higher  still,  and  on  through  an  ever 
ascending  series,  Mr.  Spencer  conducts  his  argument.  There 
are  two  obvious  factors  to  be  here  taken  into  account  —  the 
creature  and  the  medium  in  which  it  Hves,  or,  as  it  is  often  ex- 
pressed, the  organism  and  its  environment.  Mr.  Spencer's  fun- 
damental principle  is,  that  between  these  two  factors  there  is 


THE  BELFAST  ADDRESS  307 

incessant  interaction.  The  organism  is  played  upon  by  the  en- 
vironment, and  is  modified  to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  en- 
vironment. Life  he  defines  to  be  "a  continuous  adjustment  of 
internal  relations  to  external  relations." 

In  the  lowest  organisms  we  have  a  kind  of  tactual  sense  dif- 
fused over  the  entire  body ;  then,  through  impressions  from  with- 
out and  their  corresponding  adjustments,  special  portions  of  the 
surface  become  more  responsive  to  stimuli  than  others.  The 
senses  are  nascent,  the  basis  of  all  of  them  being  that  simple  tac- 
tual sense  which  the  sage  Democritus  recognized  2300  years  ago 
as  their  common  progenitor.  The  action  of  light,  in  the  first 
instance,  appears  to  be  a  mere  disturbance  of  the  chemical  pro- 
cesses in  the  animal  organism,  similar  to  that  which  occurs  in 
the  leaves  of  plants.  By  degrees  the  action  becomes  locaHzed  in 
a  few  pigment  cells,  more  sensitive  to  Hght  than  the  surround- 
ing tissue.  The  eye  is  here  incipient.  At  first  it  is  merely 
capable  of  revealing  differences  of  light  and  shade  produced  by 
bodies  close  at  hand.  Followed,  as  the  interception  of  the  light 
is  in  almost  all  cases,  by  the  contact  of  the  closely  adjacent 
opaque  body,  sight  in  this  condition  becomes  a  kind  of  "an- 
ticipatory touch."  The  adjustment  continues ;  a  slight  bulging 
out  of  the  epidermis  over  the  pigment  granules  supervenes.  A 
lens  is  incipient,  and,  through  the  operation  of  infinite  adjust- 
ments, at  length  reaches  the  perfection  that  it  displays  in  the 
hawk  and  the  eagle.  So  of  the  other  senses ;  they  are  special 
differentiations  of  a  tissue  which  was  originally  vaguely  sensitive 
all  over. 

With  the  development  of  the  senses  the  adjustments  between 
the  organism  and  its  environment  gradually  extend  in  space,  a 
multiplication  of  experiences  and  a  corresponding  modification  of 
conduct  being  the  result.  The  adjustments  also  extend  in  time, 
covering  continually  greater  intervals.  Along  with  this  exten- 
sion in  space  and  time,  the  adjustments  also  increase  in  specialty 
and  complexity,  passing  through  the  various  grades  of  brute  life 
and  prolonging  themselves  into  the  domain  of  reason.  Very 
striking  are  Mr.  Spencer's  remarks  regarding  the  influence  of 


3o8  JOHN  TYNDALL 

the  sense  of  touch  upon  the  development  of  intelligence.  This  is, 
so  to  say,  the  mother  tongue  of  all  the  senses,  into  which  they 
must  be  translated  to  be  of  service  to  the  organism.  Hence  its 
importance.  The  parrot  is  the  most  intelhgent  of  birds,  and  its 
tactual  power  is  also  greatest.  From  this  sense  it  gets  knowl- 
edge unattainable  by  birds  which  cannot  employ  their  feet  as 
hands.  The  elephant  is  the  most  sagacious  of  quadrupeds  —  its 
tactual  range  and  skill,  and  the  consequent  multiplication  of 
experiences  which  it  owes  to  its  wonderfully  adaptable  trunk 
being  the  basis  of  its  sagacity.  Feline  animals,  for  a  similar 
cause,  are  more  sagacious  than  hoofed  animals  —  atonement 
being  to  some  extent  made  in  the  case  of  the  horse  by  the  posses- 
sion of  sensitive  prehensile  lips.  In  the  Primates  the  evolution 
of  intellect  and  the  evolution  of  tactual  appendages  go  hand  in 
hand.  In  the  most  intelligent  anthropoid  apes  we  find  the  tac- 
tual range  and  delicacy  greatly  augmented,  new  avenues  of 
knowledge  being  thus  opened  to  the  animal.  Man  crowns  the 
edifice  here,  not  only  in  virtue  of  his  own  manipulatory  power, 
but  through  the  enormous  extension  of  his  range  of  experience, 
by  the  invention  of  instruments  of  precision,  which  serve  as  supv- 
plemental  senses  and  supplemental  limbs.  The  reciprocal  action 
of  these  is  finely  described  and  illustrated.  That  chastened  in- 
tellectual emotion  to  which  I  have  referred  in  connection  with 
Mr.  Darwin  is,  I  should  say,  not  absent  in  Mr.  Spencer.  His 
illustrations  possess  at  times  exceeding  vividness  and  force,  and 
from  his  style  on  such  occasions  it  is  to  be  inferred  that  the  gan- 
glia of  this  apostle  of  the  understanding  are  sometimes  the  seat 
of  a  nascent  poetic  thrill. 

It  is  a  fact  of  supreme  importance  that  actions  the  perform- 
ance of  which  at  first  requires  even  painful  effort  and  delibera- 
tion may  by  habit  be  rendered  automatic.  Witness  the  slow 
learning  of  its  letters  by  a  child,  and  the  subsequent  facility  of 
reading  in  a  man,  when  each  group  of  letters  which  forms  a 
word  is  instantly  and  without  effort  fused  to  a  single  perception. 
Instance  the  billiard  player,  whose  muscles  of  hand  and  eye, 
when  he  reaches  the  perfection  of  his  art,  are  unconsciously  co- 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  309 

ordinated.  Instance  the  musician,  who  by  practice  is  enabled 
to  fuse  a  multitude  of  arrangements  —  auditory,  tactual,  and 
muscular  —  into  a  process  of  automatic  manipulation.  Com- 
bining such  facts  with  the  doctrine  of  hereditary  transmission, 
we  reach  a  theory  of  instinct.  A  chick,  after  coming  out  of  the 
egg,  balances  itself  correctly,  runs  about,  picks  up  food,  thus 
showing  that  it  possesses  a  power  of  directing  its  movements  to 
definite  ends.  How  did  the  chick  learn  this  very  complex  co- 
ordination of  eye,  muscles,  and  beak?  It  has  not  been  indi- 
vidually taught;  its  personal  experience  is  nil;  but  it  has  the 
benefit  of  ancestral  experience.  In  its  inherited  organization 
are  registered  all  the  powers  which  it  displays  at  birth.  So  also 
as  regards  the  instinct  of  the  hive  bee,  already  referred  to.  The 
distance  at  which  the  insects  stand  apart  when  they  sweep  their 
hemispheres  and  build  their  cells  is  "organically  remembered." 
Man  also  carries  with  him  the  physical  texture  of  his  ancestry, 
as  well  as  the  inherited  intellect  bound  up  with  it.  The  defects 
of  intelligence  during  infancy  and  youth  are  probably  less  due 
to  a  lack  of  individual  experience  than  to  the  fact  that  in  early 
life  the  cerebral  organization  is  still  incomplete.  The  period 
necessary  for  completion  varies  with  the  race  and  with  the  in- 
dividual. As  a  round  shot  outstrips  a  rifled  one  on  quitting  the 
muzzle  of  the  gun,  so  the  lower  race  in  childhood  may  outstrip 
the  higher.  But  the  higher  eventually  overtakes  the  lower,  and 
surpasses  it  in  range.  As  regards  individuals,  we  do  not  always 
find  the  precocity  of  youth  prolonged  to  mental  power  in  ma- 
turity ;  while  the  dullness  of  boyhood  is  sometimes  strikingly 
contrasted  with  the  intellectual  energy  of  after  years.  Newton, 
when  a  boy,  was  weakly,  and  he  showed  no  particular  aptitude 
at  school ;  but  in  his  eighteenth  year  he  went  to  Cambridge,  and 
soon  afterward  astonished  his  teachers  by  his  power  of  dealing 
with  geometrical  problems.  During  his  quiet  youth  his  brain 
was  slowly  preparing  itself  to  be  the  organ  of  those  energies 
which  he  subsequently  displayed. 

By  myriad  blows  (to  use  a  Lucretian  phrase)  the  image  and 
superscription  of  the  external  world  are  stamped  as  states  of 


3IO  JOHN   TYNDALL 

consciousness  upon  the  organism,  the  depth  of  the  impressiop 
depending  upon  the  number  of  the  blows.  When  two  or  more 
phenomena  occur  in  the  environment  invariably  together,  they 
are  stamped  to  the  same  depth  or  to  the  same  relief,  and  are 
indissolubly  connected.  And  here  we  come  to  the  threshold  of 
a  great  question.  Seeing  that  he  could  in  no  way  rid  himself 
of  the  consciousness  of  space  and  time,  Kant  assumed  them  to 
be  necessary  "forms  of  thought,"  the  molds  and  shapes  into 
which  our  intuitions  are  thrown,  belonging  to  ourselves  solely 
and  without  objective  existence.  With  unexpected  power  and 
success  Mr.  Spencer  brings  the  hereditary  experience  theory,  as 
he  holds  it,  to  bear  upon  this  question.  "If  there  exist  certain 
external  relations  which  are  experienced  by  all  organisms  at  all 
instants  of  their  waking  lives  —  relations  which  are  absolutely 
constant  and  universal — there  will  be  established  answering  in- 
ternal relations  that  are  absolutely  constant  and  universal. 
Such  relations  we  have  in  those  of  space  and  time.  As  the  sub- 
stratum of  all  other  relations  of  the  Non-Ego,  they  must  be 
responded  to  by  conceptions  that  are  the  substrata  of  all  other 
relations  in  the  Ego.  Being  the  constant  and  infinitely  repeated 
elements  of  thought,  they  must  become  the  automatic  elements 
of  thought  —  the  elements  of  thought  which  it  is  impossible  to 
get  rid  of  —  the  'forms  of  intuition.'" 

Throughout  this  application  and  extension  of  the  "law  of  in- 
separable association,"  Mr.  Spencer  stands  on  totally  different 
ground  from  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill,  invoking  the  registered  ex- 
periences of  the  race  instead  of  the  experiences  of  the  individual. 
His  overthrow  of  Mr.  Mill's  restriction  of  experience  is,  I  think, 
complete.  That  restriction  ignores  the  power  of  organizing  ex- 
perience furnished  at  the  outset  to  each  individual ;  it  ignores 
the  different  degrees  of  this  power  possessed  by  different  races 
and  by  different  individuals  of  the  same  race.  Were  there  not 
in  the  human  brain  a  potency  antecedent  to  all  experience,  a 
dog  or  cat  ought  to  be  as  capable  of  education  as  a  man.  These 
predetermined  internal  relations  are  independent  of  the  experi- 
ences of  the  individual.     The  human  brain  is  the  "organized 


THE  BELFAST  ADDRESS  311 

register  of  infinitely  numerous  experiences  received  during  the 
evolution  of  life,  or  rather  during  the  evolution  of  that  series  of 
organisms  through  which  the  human  organism  has  been  reached. 
The  effects  of  the  most  uniform  and  frequent  of  these  experiences 
have  been  successfully  bequeathed,  principal  and  interest,  and 
have  slowly  mounted  to  that  high  intelligence  which  lies  latent 
in  the  brain  of  the  infant.  Thus  it  happens  that  the  European 
inherits  from  twenty  to  thirty  cubic  inches  more  of  brain  than 
the  Papuan.  Thus  it  happens  that  faculties,  as  of  music,  which 
scarcely  exist  in  some  inferior  races,  become  congenital  in  su- 
perior ones.  Thus  it  happens  that  out  of  savages  unable  to 
count  up  to  the  number  of  their  fingers,  and  speaking  a  language 
containing  only  nouns  and  verbs,  arise  at  length  our  Newtons 
and  Shakespeares." 

At  the  outset  of  this  address  it  was  stated  that  physical  theories 
which  lie  beyond  experience  are  derived  by  a  process  of  abstrac- 
tion from  experience.  It  is  instructive  to  note  from  this  point 
of  view  the  successive  introduction  of  new  conceptions.  The 
idea  of  the  attraction  of  gravitation  was  preceded  by  the  obser- 
vation of  the  attraction  of  iron  by  a  magnet,  and  of  light  bodies 
by  rubbed  amber.  The  polarity  of  magnetism  and  electricity 
appealed  to  the  senses ;  and  thus  became  the  substratum  of  the 
conception  that  atoms  and  molecules  are  endowed  with  definite, 
attractive,  and  repellent  poles,  by  the  play  of  which  definite 
forms  of  crystalline  architecture  are  produced.  This  molecular 
force  becomes  structural.  It  required  no  great  boldness  of 
thought  to  extend  its  play  into  organic  nature,  and  to  recognize 
in  molecular  force  the  agency  by  which  both  plants  and  animals 
are  built  up.  In  this  way,  out  of  experience  arise  conceptions 
which  are  wholly  ultra-experiential. 

The  origination  of  life  is  a  point  lightly  touched  upon,  if  at 
all,  by  Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr.  Spencer.  Diminishing  gradually 
the  number  of  progenitors,  Mr.  Darwin  comes  at  length  to  one 
"primordial  form ;"  but  he  does  not  say,  as  far  as  I  remember, 
how  he  supposes  this  form  to  have  been  introduced.  He  quotes 
\vith  satisfaction  the  words  of  a  celebrated  author  and  divine 


312  JOHN  TYNDALL 

who  had  "gradually  learned  to  see  that  it  is  just  as  noble  a  con- 
ception of  the  Deity  to  believe  He  created  a  few  original  forms, 
capable  of  self-development  into  other  and  needful  forms,  as  to 
believe  that  He  required  a  fresh  act  of  creation  to  supply  the 
voids  caused  by  the  action  of  his  laws."  What  Mr.  Darwin 
thinks  of  this  view  of  the  introduction  of  hfe  I  do  not  know. 
Whether  he  does  or  does  not  introduce  his  "primordial  form" 
by  a  creative  act,  I  do  not  know.  But  the  question  will  inevi- 
tably be  asked,  "How  came  the  form  there?"  With  regard 
to  the  diminution  of  the  number  of  created  forms,  one  does  not 
see  that  much  advantage  is  gained  by  it.  The  anthropomor- 
phism, which  it  seemed  the  object  of  Mr.  Darwin  to  set  aside, 
is  as  firmly  associated  with  the  creation  of  a  few  forms  as  with 
the  creation  of  a  multitude.  We  need  clearness  and  thorough- 
ness here.  Two  courses,  and  two  only,  are  possible.  Either  let 
us  open  our  doors  freely  to  the  conception  of  creative  acts,  or, 
abandoning  them,  let  us  radically  change  our  notions  of  matter. 
If  we  look  at  matter  as  pictured  by  Democritus,  and  as  defined 
for  generations  in  our  scientific  textbooks,  the  absolute  impos- 
sibihty  of  any  form  of  life  coming  out  of  it  would  be  sufficient 
to  render  any  other  hypothesis  preferable ;  but  the  definitions 
of  matter  given  in  our  textbooks  were  intended  to  cover  its 
purely  physical  and  mechanical  properties.  And  taught  as  we 
have  been  to  regard  these  definitions  as  complete,  we  naturally 
and  rightly  reject  the  monstrous  notion  that  out  of  such  matter 
any  form  of  life  could  possibly  arise.  But  are  the  definitions 
complete  ?  Everything  depends  on  the  answer  to  be  given  to  this 
question.  Trace  the  line  of  hfe  backward,  and  see  it  approach- 
^  ing  more  and  more  to  what  we  call  the  purely  physical  condi- 
tion. We  reach  at  length  those  organisms  which  I  have  com- 
pared to  drops  of  oil  suspended  in  a  mixture  of  alcohol  and  water. 
We  reach  the  protogenes  of  Haeckel,  in  which  we  have  "a  type 
distinguishable  from  a  fragment  of  albumen  only  by  its  finely 
granular  character."  Can  we  pause  here?  We  break  a  mag- 
net and  find  two  poles  in  each  of  its  fragments.  We  continue 
the  process  of  breaking,  but  however  small  the  parts,  each 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  313 

carries  with  it,  though  enfeebled,  the  polarity  of  the  whole. 
And  when  we  can  break  no  longer,  we  prolong  the  intellectual 
vision  to  the  polar  molecules.  Are  we  not  urged  to  do  something 
similar  in  the  case  of  life  ?  Is  there  not  a  temptation  to  close 
to  some  extent  with  Lucretius,  when  he  affirms  that  "Nature  is 
seen  to  do  all  things  spontaneously  of  herself  without  the  med- 
dling of  the  gods  ?  "  or  with  Bruno,  when  he  declares  that  mat- 
ter is  not  "that  mere  empty  capacity  which  philosophers  have 
pictured  her  to  be,  but  the  universal  mother  who  brings  forth 
all  things  as  the  fruit  of  her  own  womb  ?"  The  questions  here 
r^-ised  are  inevitable.  They  are  approaching  us  with  accelerated 
speed,  and  it  is  not  a  matter  of  indifference  whether  they  are 
introduced  with  reverence  or  irreverence.  Abandoning  all  dis- 
guise, the  confession  that  I  feel  bound  to  make  before  you  is 
that  I  prolong  the  vision  backward  across  the  boundary  of  the 
experimental  evidence,  and  discern  in  that  matter,  which  we 
in  our  ignorance,  and  notwithstanding  our  professed  reverence 
for  its  Creator,  have  hitherto  covered  with  opprobrium,  the 
promise  and  potency  of  every  form  and  quality  of  life. 

The  "materialism"  here  enunciated  may  be  different  from 
what  you  suppose,  and  I  therefore  crave  your  gracious  patience 
to  the  end.  "The  question  of  an  external  world,"  says  Mr. 
J.  S.  Mill,  "is  the  great  battle  ground  of  metaphysics."^ 
Mr.  Mill  himself  reduces  external  phenomena  to  "possibilities 
of  sensation."  Kant,  as  we  have  seen,  made  time  and  space 
"forms"  of  our  own  intuitions.  Fichte,  having  first  by  the  in- 
exorable logic  of  his  understanding  proved  himself  to  be  a  mere 
link  in  that  chain  of  external  causation  which  holds  so  rigidly 
in  nature,  violently  broke  the  chain  by  making  nature,  and  all 
that  it  inherits,  an  apparition  of  his  own  mind.^  And  it  is  by 
no  means  easy  to  combat  such  notions.  For  when  I  say  I  see 
you,  and  that  I  have  not  the  least  doubt  about  it,  the  reply  is, 
that  what  I  am  really  conscious  of  is  an  affection  of  my  own 
retina.  And  if  I  urge  that  I  can  check  my  sight  of  you  by 
touching  you,  the  retort  would  be  that  I  am  equally  transgress- 

^  Examination  of  Hamilton,  p.  154.  ^  Bestimrmmg  des  Menschen. 


314  JOHN  TYNDALL 

ing  the  limits  of  fact ;  for  what  I  am  really  conscious  of  is,  not 
that  you  are  there,  but  that  the  nerves  of  my  hand  have  under- 
gone a  change.  All  we  hear,  and  see,  and  touch,  and  taste,  and 
smell,  are,  it  would  be  urged,  mere  variations  of  our  own  con- 
dition, beyond  which,  even  to  the  extent  of  a  hair's  breadth,  we 
cannot  go.  That  anything  answering  to  our  impressions  exists 
outside  of  ourselves  is  not  a  fact,  but  an  inference,  to  which  all 
validity  would  be  denied  by  an  idealist  like  Berkeley,  or  by  a 
skeptic  like  Hume.  Mr.  Spencer  takes  another  line.  With  him, 
as  with  the  uneducated  man,  there  is  no  doubt  or  question  as 
to  the  existence  of  an  external  world.  But  he  differs  from  the 
uneducated,  who  think  that  the  world  really  is  what  conscious- 
ness represents  it  to  be.  Our  states  of  consciousness  are  mere 
symbols  of  an  outside  entity  which  produces  them  and  deter- 
mines the  order  of  their  succession,  but  the  real  nature  of  which 
we  can  never  know.^  In  fact,  the  whole  process  of  evolution  is 
the  manifestation  of  a  Power  absolutely  inscrutable  to  the  in- 
tellect of  man.  As  little  in  our  day  as  in  the  days  of  Job  can 
man,  by  searching,  find  this  Power  out.  Considered  funda- 
mentally, it  is  by  the  operation  of  an  insoluble  mystery  that  life 
is  evolved,  species  differentiated,  and  mind  unfolded  from  their 
prepotent  elements  in  the  immeasurable  past.  There  is,  you 
will  observe,  no  very  rank  materialism  here. 

1  In  a  paper,  at  once  popular  and  profound,  entitled  "Recent  Progress  in 
the  Theory  of  Vision,"  contained  in  the  volume  of  lectures  by  Helmholtz 
published  by  Longmans  [Popular  Lectures  on  Scientific  Subjects],  this  sym- 
bolism of  our  states  of  consciousness  is  also  dwelt  upon.  The  impressions  of 
sense  are  the  mere  signs  of  external  things.  In  this  paper  Helmholtz  con- 
tends strongly  against  the  view  that  the  consciousness  of  space  is  inborn; 
and  he  evidently  doubts  the  power  of  the  chick  to  pick  up  grains  of  corn 
without  some  preliminary  lessons.  On  this  point,  he  says,  further  experi- 
ments are  needed.  Such  experiments  have  been  since  made  by  Mr.  Spald- 
ing, aided,  I  believe,  in  some  of  his  observations  by  the  accomplished  and 
deeply  lamented  Lady  Amberley ;  and  they  seem  to  prove  conclusively  that 
the  chick  does  not  need  a  single  moment's  tuition  to  teach  it  to  stand,  run, 
govern  the  muscles  of  its  eyes,  and  peck.  Helmholtz,  however,  is  contend- 
ing against  the  notion  of  preestablished  harmony ;  and  I  am  not  aware  of 
his  views  as  to  the  organization  of  experiences  of  race  or  breed. 


THE  BELFAST  ADDRESS  315 

The  strength  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  consists,  not  in  an 
experimental  demonstration  (for  the  subject  is  hardly  accessible 
to  this  mode  of  proof),  but  in  its  general  harmony  with  the 
method  of  nature  as  hitherto  known.     From  contrast,  moreover, 
it  derives  enormous  relative  strength.     On  the  one  side  we  have 
a  theory  (if  it  could  with  any  propriety  be  so  called)  derived,  as 
were  the  theories  referred  to  at  the  beginning  of  this  address,  not 
from  the  study  of  nature,  but  from  the  observation  of  men  — 
a  theory  which  converts  the  Power  whose  garment  is  seen  in 
the  visible  universe  into  an  artificer,  fashioned  after  the  human 
model,  and  acting  by  broken  efforts  as  man  is  seen  to  act.     On 
the  other  side  we  have  the  conception  that  all  we  see  around  us, 
and  all  we  feel  within  us  —  the  phenomena  of  physical  nature 
as  well  as  those  of  the  human  mind  —  have  their  unsearchable 
roots  in  a  cosmical  life,  if  I  dare  apply  the  term,  an  infinitesimal 
span  of  which  only  is  offered  to  the  investigation  of  man.     And 
even  this  span  is  only  knowable  in  part.     We  can  trace  the  de- 
velopment of  a  nervous  system,  and  correlate  with  it  the  parallel 
phenomena  of  sensation  and  thought.     We  see  with  undoubting 
certainty  that  they  go  hand  in  hand.     But  we  try  to  soar  in 
a  vacuum  the  moment  we  seek  to  comprehend  the  connection 
between    them.     An    Archimedean    fulcrum    is   here    required 
which  the  human  mind  cannot  command;    and  the  effort  to 
solve  the  problem,  to  borrow  an  illustration  from  an  illustrious 
friend  of  mine,  is  like  the  effort  of  a  man  trying  to  lift  himself 
by  his  own  waistband.     All  that  has  been  here  said  is  to  be  taken 
in  connection  with  this  fundamental  truth.     When  "nascent 
senses"  are  spoken  of,  when  "the  differentiation  of  a  tissue  at 
first  vaguely  sensitive  all  over"  is  spoken  of,  and  when  these 
processes  are  associated  with  "the  modification  of  an  organism 
by  its  environment,"  the  same  parallelism  without  contact,  or 
even  approach  to  contact,  is  implied.     There  is  no  fusion  pos- 
sible between  the  two  classes  of  facts  —  no  motor  energy  in  the 
intellect  of  man  to  carry  it  without  logical  rupture  from  the  one 
to  the  other. 

Further,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  derives  man,  in  his  totality, 


3i6  JOHN  TYNDALL 

from  the  interaction  of  organism  and  environment  through 
countless  ages  past.  The  human  understanding,  for  example  — 
the  faculty  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  turned  so  skillfully  round 
upon  its  own  antecedents  —  is  itself  a  result  of  the  play  between 
organism  and  environment  through  cosmic  ranges  of  time. 
Never  surely  did  prescription  plead  so  irresistible  a  claim.  But 
then  it  comes  to  pass  that,  over  and  above  his  understanding, 
there  are  many  other  things  appertaining  to  man  whose  pre- 
scriptive rights  are  quite  as  strong  as  that  of  the  understanding 
itself.  It  is  a  result,  for  example,  of  the  play  of  organism  and 
environment  that  sugar  is  sweet  and  that  aloes  are  bitter,  that 
the  smell  of  henbane  differs  from  the  perfume  of  a  rose.  Such 
facts  of  consciousness  (for  which,  by  the  way,  no  adequate 
reason  has  ever  yet  been  rendered)  are  quite  as  old  as  the  under- 
standing itself;  and  many  other  things  can  boast  an  equally 
ancient  origin.  Mr.  Spencer  at  one  place  refers  to  that  most 
powerful  of  passions  —  the  amatory  passion  —  as  one  which, 
when  it  first  occurs,  is  antecedent  to  all  relative  experience  what- 
ever ;  and  we  may  pass  its  claim  as  being  at  least  as  ancient  and 
as  valid  as  that  of  the  understanding  itself.  Then  there  are 
such  things  woven  into  the  texture  of  man  as  the  feeling  of  awe, 
reverence,  wonder  —  and  not  alone  the  sexual  love  just  referred 
to,  but  the  love  of  the  beautiful,  physical  and  moral,  in  nature, 
poetry,  and  art.  There  is  also  that  deep-set  feeling  which,  since 
the  earliest  dawn  of  history,  and  probably  for  ages  prior  to  all 
history,  incorporated  itself  in  the  religions  of  the  world.  You 
who  have  escaped  from  these  religions  in  the  high  and  dry 
light  of  the  understanding  may  deride  them;  but  in  so  doing 
you  deride  accidents  of  form  merely,  and  fail  to  touch  the  im- 
movable basis  of  the  religious  sentiment  in  the  emotional  nature 
of  man.  To  yield  this  sentiment  reasonable  satisfaction  is  the 
problem  of  problems  at  the  present  hour.  And  grotesque  in  re- 
lation to  scientific  culture  as  many  of  the  religions  of  the  world 
have  been  and  are  —  dangerous,  nay,  destructive,  to  the  dearest 
privileges  of  freemen  as  some  of  them  undoubtedly  have  been, 
and  would,  if  they  could,  be  again  —  it  will  be  wise  to  recognize 


THE  BELFAST  ADDRESS  317 

them  as  the  forms  of  force,  mischievous,  if  permitted  to  intrude 
on  the  region  of  knowledge,  over  which  it  holds  no  command, 
but  capable  of  being  guided  by  liberal  thought  to  noble  issues 
in  the  region  of  emotion,  which  is  its  proper  sphere.  It  is  vain 
to  oppose  this  force  with  a  view  to  its  extirpation.  What  we 
should  oppose,  to  the  death  if  necessary,  is  every  attempt  to 
found  upon  this  elemental  bias  of  man's  nature  a  system  which 
should  exercise  despotic  sway  over  his  intellect.  I  do  not  fear 
any  such  consummation.  Science  has  already  to  some  extent 
leavened  the  world,  and  it  will  leaven  it  more  and  more.  I 
should  look  upon  the  mild  light  of  science  breaking  in  upon  the 
minds  of  the  youth  of  Ireland,  and  strengthening  gradually  to 
the  perfect  day,  as  a  surer  check  to  any  intellectual  or  spiritual 
tyranny  which  might  threaten  this  island  than  the  laws  of 
princes  or  the  swords  of  emperors.  Where  is  the  cause  of  fear  ? 
We  fought  and  won  our  battle  even  in  the  Middle  Ages :  why 
should  we  doubt  the  issue  of  a  conflict  now  ? 

The  impregnable  position  of  science  may  be  described  in  a 
few  words.  All  religious  theories,  schemes,  and  systems,  which 
embrace  notions  of  cosmogony,  or  which  otherwise  reach  into 
its  domain,  must,  in  so  far  as  they  do  this,  submit  to  the  con- 
trol of  science,  and  relinquish  all  thought  of  controlling  it.  Act- 
ing otherwise  proved  disastrous  in  the  past,  and  it  is  simply 
fatuous  to-day.  Every  system  which  would  escape  the  fate  of 
an  organism  too  rigid  to  adjust  itself  to  its  environment  must 
be  plastic  to  the  extent  that  the  growth  of  knowledge  demands. 
When  this  truth  has  been  thoroughly  taken  in,  rigidity  will  be 
relaxed,  exclusiveness  diminished,  things  now  deemed  essential 
will  be  dropped,  and  elements  now  rejected  will  be  assimilated. 
The  lifting  of  the  life  is  the  essential  point ;  and  as  long  as  dog- 
matism, fanaticism,  and  intolerance  are  kept  out,  various  modes 
of  leverage  may  be  employed  to  raise  life  to  a  higher  level. 
Science  itself  not  unfrequently  derives  motive  power  from  an 
ultra-scientific  source.  Whewell  speaks  of  enthusiasm  of  temper 
as  a  hindrance  to  science ;  but  he  means  the  enthusiasm  of  weak 
heads.     There  is  a  strong  and  resolute  enthusiasm  in  which 


3i8  JOHN  TYNDALL 

science  finds  an  ally ;  and  it  is  to  the  lowering  of  this  fire,  rather 
than  to  a  diminution  of  intellectual  insight,  that  the  lessening 
productiveness  of  men  of  science  in  their  m.ature  years  is  to  be 
ascribed.  Mr.  Buckle  sought  to  detach  intellectual  achieve- 
ment from  moral  force.  He  gravely  erred;  for  without  moral 
force  to  whip  it  into  action,  the  achievements  of  the  intellect 
would  be  poor  indeed. 

It  has  been  said  that  science  divorces  itself  from  literature. 
The  statement,  like  so  many  others,  arises  from  lack  of  knowl- 
edge. A  glance  at  the  less  technical  writings  of  its  leaders — of 
its  Helmholtz,  its  Huxley,  and  its  Du  Bois-Reymond  —  would 
show  what  breadth  of  literary  culture  they  command.  Where 
among  modern  writers  can  you  find  their  superiors  in  clearness 
and  vigor  of  literary  style?  Science  desires  no  isolation,  but 
freely  combines  with  every  effort  toward  the  bettering  of  man's 
estate.  Single-handed,  and  supported  not  by  outward  sym- 
pathy, but  by  inward  force,  it  has  built  at  least  one  great  wing 
of  the  many-mansioned  home  which  man  in  his  totality  demands. 
And  if  rough  walls  and  protruding  rafter  ends  indicate  that  on 
one  side  the  edifice  is  still  incomplete,  it  is  only  by  wise  com- 
bination of  the  parts  required  with  those  already  irrevocably 
built  that  we  can  hope  for  completeness.  There  is  no  necessary 
incongruity  between  what  has  been  accomplished  and  what  re- 
mains to  be  done.  The  moral  glow  of  Socrates,  which  we  all 
feel  by  ignition,  has  in  it  nothing  incompatible  with  the  physics 
of  Anaxagoras  which  he  so  much  scorned,  but  which  he  would 
hardly  scorn  to-day..  And  here  I  am  reminded  of  one  among 
us,  hoary,  but  still  strong,  whose  prophet  voice  some  thirty 
years  ago,  far  more  than  any  other  of  this  age,  unlocked  what- 
ever of  life  and  nobleness  lay  latent  in  its  most  gifted  minds  — 
one  fit  to  stand  beside  Socrates  or  the  Maccabean  Eleazar,  and 
to  dare  and  suffer  all  that  they  suffered  and  dared  —  fit,  as  he 
once  said  of  Fichte,  "to  have  been  the  teacher  of  the  Stoa,  and 
to  have  discoursed  of  beauty  and  virtue  in  the  groves  of  Aca- 
deme." With  a  capacity  to  grasp  physical  principles  which  his 
friend  Goethe  did  not  possess,  and  which  even  total  lack  of 


THE   BELFAST  ADDRESS  319 

exercise  has  not  been  able  to  reduce  to  atrophy,  it  is  the  world's 
loss  that  he,  in  the  vigor  of  his  years,  did  not  open  his  mind  and 
sympathies  to  science,  and  make  its  conclusions  a  portion  of 
his  message  to  mankind.  Marvelously  endowed  as  he  was  — 
equally  equipped  on  the  side  of  the  heart  and  of  the  understand- 
ing— he  might  have  done  much  toward  teaching  us  how  to  rec- 
oncile the  claims  of  both,  and  to  enable  them  in  coming  times 
to  dwell  together  in  unity  of  spirit  and  in  the  bond  of  peace.^ 

And  now  the  end  is  come.  With  more  time,  or  greater  strength 
and  knowledge,  what  has  been  here  said  might  have  been  better 
said,  while  worthy  matters  here  omitted  might  have  received  fit 
expression.  But  there  would  have  been  no  material  deviation 
from  the  views  set  forth.  As  regards  myself,  they  are  not  the 
growth  of  a  day ;  and  as  regards  you,  I  thought  you  ought  to 
know  the  environment  which,  with  or  without  your  consent,  is 
rapidly  surrounding  you,  and  in  relation  to  which  some  adjust- 
ment on  your  part  may  be  necessary.  A  hint  of  Hamlet's,  how- 
ever, teaches  us  all  how  the  troubles  of  common  life  may  be 
ended ;  and  it  is  perfectly  possible  for  you  and  me  to  purchase 
intellectual  peace  at  the  price  of  intellectual  death.  The  world 
is  not  without  refuges  of  this  description ;  nor  is  it  wanting  in 
persons  who  seek  their  shelter  and  try  to  persuade  others  to  do 
the  same.  I  would  exhort  you  to  refuse  such  shelter,  and  to 
scorn  such  base  repose  —  to  accept,  if  the  choice  be  forced  upon 
you,  commotion  before  stagnation,  the  leap  of  the  torrent  before 
the  stillness  of  the  swamp.  In  the  one  there  is  at  all  events  life, 
and  therefore  hope ;  in  the  other,  none.  I  have  touched  on  de- 
batable questions,  and  led  you  over  dangerous  ground ;  and  this 
partly  with  the  view  of  telling  you,  and  through  you  the  world, 
that  as  regards  these  questions  science  claims  unrestricted  right 
of  search.  It  is  not  to  the  point  to  say  that  the  views  of  Lucre- 
tius and  Bruno,  of  Darwin  and  Spencer,  may  be  wrong.  Here 
I  should  agree  with  you,  deeming  it  indeed  certain  that  these 
views  will  undergo  modification.  But  the  point  is,  that,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  we  claim  the  freedom  to  discuss  them.  The 
^Tyndall  refers  here  lo  Carlylc.  —  Editors. 


320  JOHN  TYNDALL 

ground  which  they  cover  is  scientific  ground;  and  the  right 
claimed  is  one  made  good  through  tribulation  and  anguish,  in- 
flicted and  endured  in  darker  times  than  ours,  but  resulting  in 
the  immortal  victories  which  science  has  won  for  the  human  race. 
I  would  set  forth  equally  the  inexorable  advance  of  man's  under- 
standing in  the  path  of  knowledge,  and  the  unquenchable  claims 
of  his  emotional  nature  which  the  understanding  can  never 
satisfy.  The  world  embraces  not  only  a  Newton,  but  a  Shake- 
speare ;  not  only  a  Boyle,  but  a  Raphael ;  not  only  a  Kant, 
but  a  Beethoven;  not  only  a  Darwin,  but  a  Carlyle.  Not  in 
each  of  these,  but  in  all,  is  human  nature  whole.  They  are  not 
opposed,  but  supplementary ;  not  mutually  exclusive,  but  recon- 
cilable. And  if,  still  unsatisfied,  the  human  mind,  with  the 
yearning  of  a  pilgrim  for  his  distant  home,  will  turn  to  the 
mystery  from  which  it  has  emerged,  seeking  so  to  fashion  it  as 
to  give  unity  to  thought  and  faith  —  so  long  as  this  is  done, 
not  only  without  intolerance  or  bigotry  of  any  kind,  but  with 
the  enlightened  recognition  that  ultimate  fixity  of  conception  is 
here  unattainable,  and  that  each  succeeding  age  must  be  held 
free  to  fashion  the  mystery  in  accordance  with  its  own  needs, 
then,  in  opposition  to  all  the  restrictions  of  Materialism,  I  would 
affirm  this  to  be  a  field  for  the  noblest  exercise  of  what,  in  con- 
trast with  the  knowing  faculties,  may  be  called  the  creative  facul- 
ties of  man.  Here,  however,  I  must  quit  a  theme  too  great  for 
me  to  handle,  but  which  will  be  handled  by  the  loftiest  minds 
ages  after  you  and  I,  like  streaks  of  morning  cloud,  shall  have 
melted  into  the  infinite  azure  of  the  past. 


XI 

TRUTH  AND  IMMORTALITY^ 

Charles  Fletcher  Dole 

[Charles  Fletcher  Dole  (1845-)  is  a  well-known  New  England  clergy- 
man and  a  writer  of  note  on  religious  and  sociological  subjects.  He  gradu- 
ated from  Harvard  in  1868  and  from  the  Andover  Theological  Seminary  in 
1872;  four  years  later  he  became  minister  of  the  First  Congregational 
Church  (Unitarian),  at  Jamaica  Plain,  Boston,  and  has  continued  in  that 
position  to  the  present  time.  Dr.  Dole  has  been  actively  identified  with 
a  number  of  religious  and  social  movements  and  organizations,  was  Inger- 
soU  lecturer  at  Harvard  in  1906,  and  is  the  author  of  many  books  and 
articles  in  his  special  fields  of  interest. 

Truth  and  Immortality,  published  in  the  Harvard  Theological  Review  for 
April,  1909,  is  a  reasoned  argument  in  support  of  the  belief  in  a  future 
life ;  and  as  such,  it  may  be  taken  as  a  reply  to  the  philosophy  of  such  men 
as  Huxley  and  Tyndall,  who  find  no  justification  in  scientific  truth  for  the 
hope  of  immortality.  Dr.  Dole  argues  that  the  hope  of  immortality,  far 
from  being  without  the  province  of  truth,  is,  in  fact,  part  and  parcel  of 
that  province;  that  it  underHes  our  conception  of  an  ordered  and  pur- 
poseful universe,  and  is  essential  to  harmonious  human  development. 

Modern  thought  on  the  subject  of  future  life  by  theologians,  scientists, 
and  philosophers,  is  admirably  represented  in  the  series  of  Ingersoll  lectures 
which  have  been  given  annually  at  Harvard  since  1896.] 

One  everywhere  finds  people  who  have  given  up  the  hope  of 
immortality  or  else  regard  it  with  extreme  doubt.  Forms  of  be- 
lief with  which  it  has  been  associated  have  proved  unthinkable 
to  them.  Worse  yet,  to  hope  for  immortality  seems  not  to  be 
loyal  to  truth.  "We  want  reality,"  they  say.  "We  propose  to 
face  the  facts ;  we  demand  honest  thinking.  We  have  no  use 
for  dreams,  however  pleasant ;  we  wish  only  truth."  Mr.  Hux- 
ley's famous  letter  to  his  friend   Charles  Kingsley   expresses 

^  Reprinted  by  permission  from  the  Harvard  Theological  Review,  April,  1909. 

321 


322 


CHARLES   FLETCHER   DOLE 


this  attitude.  Here  is  a  man  who,  in  the  greatest  of  sorrows, 
feels  obliged  to  put  away  comfort  and  hope  in  obedience  to  the 
demand  of  truth.  It  is  not  possible  to  divide  his  mind  into  ex- 
clusive compartments,  and  to  indulge  an  ancient  religious  emo- 
tion on  one  side  of  himself,  while  on  the  other  side  he  remains 
the  conscientious  student  of  science.  He  must  keep  his  integ- 
rity at  any  cost  to  his  feelings.  No  one  can  help  admiring  this 
type  of  mind.  A  multitude  of  people  who  have  nothing  like 
Mr.  Huxley's  rigor  of  conscience  are  immensely  moved  by  the 
attitude  of  such  men  as  he.  If  he  could  see  no  truth  in  immor- 
tality and  had  to  remain  an  agnostic  about  it,  why  should  we 
not  be  agnostics  also  ? 

I  believe  that  Mr.  Huxley  was  right  in  his  insistence  upon 
truth  and  conscience.  I  believe  also  that  he  was  mistaken  as 
to  the  relation  between  truth  and  the  hope  of  immortality.  I 
shall  try  to  show  in  this  paper  that  the  hope  of  immortality,  so 
far  from  being  excluded  from  the  realm  of  truth  and  reality,  is 
involved  in  the  essential  structure  of  this  realm.  I  shall  have 
occasion  to  point  out  considerations  to  which  I  see  no  evidence 
that  Mr.  Huxley  (and  I  use  his  name  as  the  type  of  a  consider- 
able class)  ever  paid  attention.  The  fact  is,  that  the  thinking 
men  of  the  last  century  suffered  an  immense  reaction  in  the  tide 
of  the  new  thoughts  that  came  in  with  the  scientific  period  of 
development.  The  first  net  impression  was  the  sense  of  a  loss 
of  the  fabric  of  ancient  traditions  and  religions.  It  was  not  easy 
immediately  to  adjust  one's  eyes  to  the  new  light  and  to  esti- 
mate what  kind  of  a  universe  had  been  brought  to  view.  I 
cannot  doubt  that  if  such  minds  as  Mr.  Huxley  had  only  gone 
on  to  urge  their  splendid  courage  and  loyalty  a  few  steps  farther, 
they  would  have  come  to  the  same  constructive  conclusions 
which  their  somewhat  cautious  negative  work  has  vastly  helped 
us  of  a  later  generation  to  reach. 

Let  us,  however,  put  aside  the  subject  of  immortality  for  a 
while,  and  first  ask  the  straight  question  :  What  is  truth  ?  Or, 
what  constitutes  reality  ?  As  with  most  ultimate  questions,  this 
is  not  easy  precisely  to  say.     The  ultimate  things  appear  always 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  323 

to  be  larger  than  our  definitions.  In  a  general  and  quite  un- 
dogmatic  sense  we  may  say  that  truth  is  that  which  fits  into  its 
place  or  order.  The  untrue  is  that  which  does  not  fit,  or  match. 
We  are  using  here  a  parable  taken  from  outward  things,  but 
our  thinking  is  none  the  worse  because  it  falls  into  this  form 
of  illustration.  Does  not  all  thinking  proceed  by  figures  and 
symbols  ? 

We  make  a  simple  statement :  The  earth  is  round.  This  is 
true,  so  far  as  the  description  "round"  fits  the  shape  of  the 
earth.  We  know  that  it  is  not  exactly  true.  Why  is  it  not 
quite  true  ?  Because  we  have  an  idea  of  perfect  roundness  into 
which  the  earth,  as  it  is,  does  not  fit.  We  describe  an  occurrence, 
an  accident  perhaps,  which  we  have  witnessed.  Our  account 
may  possibly  express  our  view  of  the  facts.  Yet  we  can  almost 
never  make  our  description  tell  the  exact  story  of  what  happened. 
Our  senses  are  imperfect  instruments  of  observation;  our 
memories  may  play  us  false ;  our  language  is  only  a  makeshift, 
and  never  quite  conveys  even  our  imperfect  impressions  of  an 
event.  Neither  do  our  words  —  a  system  of  makeshift  symbols 
—  always  mean  the  same  thing  to  another  as  they  mean  to  us. 
No  two  pairs  of  eyes  perhaps  witness  exactly  the  same  occur- 
rence. The  question  already  begins  to  arise :  Why,  since  the 
truth  is  so  elusive,  should  we  be  so  strenuous  to  insist  upon  it  ? 

Our  idea  of  reahty  is  involved  with  our  notion  of  truth.  We 
hold  that,  behind  impressions  and  sensations  and  the  words  that 
describe  our  feelings  about  things,  there  is  some  substance  (call 
it  matter  or  spirit  as  you  please)  which,  so  far  as  our  descrip- 
tion of  it  is  exact,  corresponds  to,  or  matches  with,  the  descrip- 
tion. We  do  not  pretend  that  we  know  or  can  know  this  sub- 
stance, as  it  is,  but  we  think  or  assume  that  we  know  it  at  least 
in  the  form  of  its  relations  to  us,  and  that  its  relations,  as  we 
discover  them,  translate  the  reality  on  the  whole  fairly  well,  as 
if  by  picture  language,  for  all  practical  purposes. 

We  assume,  too,  or  surmise  (may  we  dare  to  say  that  we  know  ?) 
that  everything  in  this  realm  of  reality  that  lies  just  behind  all 
phenomena  is  related  or  matched  together  with  everything  else. 


324  CHARLES   FLETCHER  DOLE 

To  know  the  truth  would  be  to  know  how  things  fit  or  are  re- 
lated together.  To  know  all  about  a  grain  of  sand  would  thus 
be  to  know  all  about  the  world.     At  any  rate  the  phenomena 

—  the  picture  language  with  which  our  minds  are  impressed 
through  our  eyes  and  ears  and  nerves  of  sense  —  come  to  us  in 
the  most  elaborate  network  of  relations,  sometimes  of  mere  juxta- 
position, sometimes  in  relations  of  what  we  call  cause  and  effect, 
always  in  a  certain  succession  in  time,  always  also  suggestive 
of  a  unity,  or  order,  or  harmony,  to  which,  if  we  knew  enough, 
all  would  be  found  to  belong.  In  other  words,  we  surmise  that 
truth,  if  we  could  get  at  it,  would  be  the  complete  description  of 
the  order  and  unity  of  the  world  in  and  through  all  its  parts  and 
its  motions. 

We  are  now  sailing  audaciously  over  great  depths  in  thought. 
If  any  one  cares  to  object  and  question :  How  dare  you  surmise 
and  assume  so  much  ?  How  dare  you  speak  of  fitnesses  and  order 
and  relations  of  unity?  we  have  to  reply  that  we  cannot  help 
making  these  bold  assumptions  if  we  are  going  to  think  at  all, 
or  to  investigate,  or  even  to  live  sanely.  Our  interest  and  im- 
pulse to  observe,  and  still  more  to  try  to  order  our  observations 
into  the  form  of  science,  spring  from  our  conviction,  or  faith, 
that  there  is  order  and  significance  and  unity  to  be  discovered 

—  in  other  words,  that  this  is  not  chaos  in  which  we  live,  but  a 
universe.  This  is  a  faith;  it  certainly  is  not  "soHd  fact"  or 
knowledge.  But  the  very  idea  of  truth  is  bound  up  with  the 
faith.  If  there  were  no  reality  corresponding  to  our  view  of 
things,  if  things  did  not  fit  together  so  as  to  spell  out  into  intel- 
ligible meanings,  if  the  net  impression  of  the  world  was  only  an 
ash  heap  and  not  a  universe,  what  possible  sense  would  there  be 
in  urging  the  necessity  of  truth  ?  Truth  is  a  postulate  of  faith, 
albeit  an  intellectual  and  not  a  supernatural  kind  of  faith. 

We  know  more  about  our  own  minds  than  we  know  of  anything 
outside  of  us.  Our  minds  impose  certain  forms  of  thinking  upon 
us.  Our  ininds  instinctively  work  on  the  lines  of  order.  They 
tend  to  expect  relations  of  fitness  and  harmony.  They  are 
prompted  by  all  kinds  of  stimuli  to  set  up  standards  and  ideals. 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  325 

They  act  under  certain  universal  categories  to  inquire,  Where  ? 
When  ?  Why  ?  To  use  a  figure  of  speech,  we  may  say  that  they 
behave  like  a  kaleidoscope,  which,  turn  it  as  you  will,  imposes 
color  and  order  on  the  material  within  it.  So  it  is  the  nature  of 
intelligence  to  reflect  everything  which  falls  upon  its  mirror  in 
forms  of  order.  The  mind  seems  to  be  made  to  construct,  that 
is,  to  fit  its  material  together,  as  a  poet  or  architect  does.  The 
intelligence  looks  for  and  expects  significance  and  unity.  Even 
before  it  gets  demonstration,  it  tends  to  proceed  on  its  faith  that 
its  world  is  reasonable,  or,  at  least,  that  there  is  a  standard  of 
reason  and  fitness  into  which,  if  things  do  not  match,  they  are 
futile.  Yes.  Even  when  the  doubting  mind  in  its  pessimist 
mood  pronounces  the  world  an  illusion,  or  when  the  agnostic 
mind  halts  in  doubt  whether  the  universe  means  anything  to 
man  beyond  his  burial  ground,  this  very  pronouncement  of  des- 
peration proceeds  on  the  marvelous  conception  of  a  possible 
world  of  order  and  beauty  with  which,  as  a  standard,  the  actual 
world  is  tried  and  found  wanting. 

Thus  the  most  negative  "truth"  gets  its  meaning  out  of  the 
depths  of  an  intelligence  that  cannot  help  thinking  in  terms  of 
reason  and  unity.  Why  tell  the  dismal  truth,  some  one  asks,  that 
all  things  are  vanity  ?  Because  the  mind  conceives  the  idea  of 
a  real  world  which  puts  a  vain  world  to  shame.  It  is  the  faith 
in  at  least  the  possibility  of  a  real  world  that  gives  character  to 
criticism,  blasphemy,  and  denial. 

What  we  call  "reality,"  at  every  point,  when  we  try  to  ap- 
proach it,  proves  to  be  beyond  anything  that  we  distinctly 
know  or  can  define.  Our  thought  of  it  arises,  indeed,  out  of  the 
region  of  our  senses  and  by  the  aid  of  our  instruments  of  research. 
It  begins  with  "  solid  facts  "  (which  are  not  solid  at  all,  but  merely 
our  consciousness  of  relations  in  phenomena)  and  passes  over 
at  once  into  a  realm,  absolutely  necessary  to  our  thinking  and 
living,  and  yet  always  beyond  the  touch  of  our  senses.  We  have 
so  many  things,  a,  b,  c,  etc.,  given  us  as  our  working  material, 
and  presently  we  find  x,  y,  z,  into  which  the  simple  deliverances 
of  our  senses  have  been  irresistibly  transformed.     The  realm  of 


326  CHARLES  FLETCHER  DOLE 

what  we  call  known  values  in  things  is  not  so  real  or  necessary  to 
us  as  is  this  realm  of  thoughts,  of  order,  of  fitnesses  and  unity, 
with  which  alone  truth  is  concerned.  Truth  is  thus  always 
a  -\-  xoT  b  -{-  z;  that  is,  the  thing  we  get  by  our  senses  plus  what 
our  niinds  make  of  it  by  the  act  of  the  faith  of  reason,  in  trying 
to  fit  it  as  well  as  we  can  into  a  place  in  our  realm  of  reality. 

See  how  true  this  is  in  the  very  beginnings  of  our  thought  of 
the  visible  world.  We  call  a  stone  hard  and  rough.  This  is 
the  a  and  b  of  our  knowledge.  But  we  go  a  step  further,  and 
every  atom  of  the  stone  is  in  motion.  These  atoms  are  unknown 
creations,  x  and  y.  We  try  to  catch  the  atoms  and  weigh  them 
and  tell  in  how  large  platoons  they  march  together.  Presently 
we  are  not  contemplating  atoms  at  all,  in  the  sense  of  hard  bits 
of  stufif.  We  are  in  the  presence  of  infinitesimal  tornadoes  of 
force.  Whatever  now  we  decide  to  call  this  substance  of  the 
rock,  whether  matter,  or  atoms,  or  centers  of  force,  or  spirit,  it  is 
the  name  for  our  faith  in  an  almighty  and  wonderful  reality 
rather  than  an  exact  description  of  a  solid  fact  that  we  know  all 
about.  Our  conclusion  —  that  is,  the  truth  about  matter  —  is 
the  best  makeshift  or  working  theory  that  we  can  reach  to  fit  to- 
gether our  experiences  of  what  matter  does  for  us.  Truth  chal- 
lenges our  modesty  as  much  as  the  accuracy  of  our  observation 
and  description. 

Take  another  simple  statement  of  fact.  We  say  that  a  certain 
line  drawn  on  the  paper  is  not  straight.  How  do  we  know  this  ? 
No  one  of  us  has  ever  seen  a  perfect  line ;  yet  we  carry  in  our 
minds  the  idea  of  straightness,  or  of  circularity,  which  has  only 
been  suggested  to  us,  but  never  realized.  In  the  realm  of  our 
thought,  the  idea  of  the  straight  line  or  the  perfect  circle  is  essen- 
tial. It  is  more  real,  though  invisible,  than  any  line  that  we  see. 
We  are  so  made  that,  while  intelligence  survives,  this  idea  will 
live  with  us  when  all  visible  lines  are  expunged.  Truth  in  lines 
and  forms  is  measured  by  this  ideal  and  most  actual  standard. 
However  this  standard  may  have  grown  out  of  our  experience,  it 
always  transcends  experience.  It  is  indeed  a  necessity  of  our 
thought. 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  327 

We  catch  sight  now  of  a  group  of  standards  and  ideals,  all 
different  from  the  actual  "facts"  of  life,  related  to  the  facts,  sug- 
gested perhaps  by  the  facts,  but  always  above  the  facts,  and  quite 
as  essential  to  our  practical  use  of  the  facts  as  the  yardstick  or 
the  standard  pound  is  essential  in  buying  and  selling.  Every 
utility  or  convenience,  a  comfortable  dwelling,  a  hygienic  system 
of  plumbing,  a  proper  suit  of  clothes  or  pair  of  shoes,  presupposes 
an  ideal,  invisible  standard  of  thoroughness  and  excellence  of 
workmanship.  We  say  that  the  suit  fits ;  we  say  that  the  founda- 
tion wall  is  true.  We  proceed  at  every  practical  issue  by  ideal 
standards  which  no  work  of  man  ever  completely  reached.  The 
ideal  of  what  a  house  or  a  ship  should  be  is  more  real  than  the 
actual  construction.  Moreover,  we  believe  that,  if  we  knew 
more,  we  should  see  even  a  nobler  ideal  of  fitness  and  truth  than 
that  by  which  we  now  measure  our  workmanship.  Our  ideal  is 
like  the  asymptote,  always  approximating,  but  never  quite  touch- 
ing, the  invisible  ultimate  ideals  toward  which  our  faith,  guided 
by  each  new  access  of  experience,  climbs. 

We  are  introduced  immediately  into  the  realm  of  beauty.  To 
the  eyes  of  the  artist  or  poet  there  is  nothing  so  actual  as  the  vi- 
sion of  beautiful  objects  that  the  visible  universe  only  suggests, 
but  never  quite  realizes,  or  can  realize,  in  material  form.  Our 
true  humanity  has  not  begun  till  we  love  these  visions  of  beauty 
and  strive  to  keep  their  company.  Thus,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  more  wonderful  and  mysterious  than  the  facts,  the  forms, 
and  the  power  of  music.  It  arises  out  of  noises  and  sound  waves, 
but  it  consists  in  harmonies  which  ally  it  to  the  ideal  kingdom  of 
mathematics.  Its  deUght  is  in  the  fact  that  it  fits  and  satisfies 
our  ears.  It  demands  truth  or  fideUty  in  the  musician ;  it  de- 
pends upon  the  attunement  and  the  perfect  time  of  his  instrument. 
The  standard  is  always  beyond  his  best  effort.  This  standard, 
which  no  man  ever  reaches,  is  more  real  than  any  of  his  work. 

Why  must  the  artist  or  the  musician  obey  the  law  of  this  quite 
ideal  vision  or  standard  ?  Why  must  the  violinist  play  up  to  a 
degree  of  perfection  that  no  one  can  reach  ?  Why  must  the 
painter  follow  his  vision,  though  he  may  never  be  thanked  or  re- 


328  CHARLES  FLETCHER  DOLE 

warded,  and  though  the  work  of  the  "pot-boiler"  may  bring  him 
cheap  fame  and  pay?  The  fact  is  that  man,  at  his  best,  be- 
longs to  an  ideal  world,  which,  once  being  entered  upon,  becomes 
more  real  than  the  solid  ground  under  his  feet.  There  is  no 
truth,  except  within  this  region  of  invisible  reaUties. 

All  the  moralities  now  face  us  with  their  commanding  pres- 
ences. "Duty,  stern  daughter  of  the  voice  of  God,"  is  here. 
Conscience  sets  up  its  imperative,  the  strange  word  "ought." 
We  can  get  along  quite  well  for  a  Uttle  way  with  a  superficial  ex- 
planation of  morality.  We  may  say  that  it  is  merely  customary 
conduct,  imitating  the  traditions  and  usages  of  a  tribe  or  a  fam- 
ily. We  may  say  that  it  arises  out  of  social  expediency.  All 
this  is  true.  The  point  which  we  urge  is  that  all  morality,  how- 
ever simply  it  arises,  moves  up  into  the  realm  of  ideal  values.  In 
other  words,  truth  in  morals  is  more  than  the  mere  fitness  of  an 
action  to  a  custom  or  tradition  or  an  act  of  legislation ;  it  is  the 
effort  to  fit  a  standard  or  ideal  that  no  words,  least  of  all  the 
terms  of  an  enactment,  can  define.  Take  Mr.  Haeckel's  in- 
sistence upon  the  scientist's  duty  to  say  what  he  thinks.  You 
cannot  measure  this  duty  in  terms  of  expediency,  any  more  than 
you  can  rate  a  beautiful  painting  in  so  many  dollars.  You  can- 
not prescribe  how  far  the  scientist  must  go  in  his  telling  the  truth, 
any  more  than  you  can  say  how  far  the  musician  shall  go  in  his 
effort  after  perfection  of  tone  and  harmony.  You  cannot  prove 
that  it  will  do  Mr.  Haeckel  any  material  good  to  tell  the  truth, 
or  even  that  his  truth  will  do  the  world  any  good.  Yet  we  all 
agree  with  Mr.  Haeckel  that  he  must  tell  the  truth,  even  if  the 
whole  world  holds  up  its  hands  in  horror  at  him.  This  idea  of 
an  absolute  or  infinite  duty  to  truth  is  in  another  realm  from  that 
of  the  "solid  facts"  of  the  man  on  the  street.  It  belongs  in  the 
realm  of  the  ideal  and  invisible,  and  what,  for  want  of  any  better 
term,  we  call  the  spiritual.  But  the  man  on  the  street  applauds 
it,  and  believes  in  it,  and  owns  that  it  is  more  real  and  permanent 
than  the  stones  under  his  feet.     Yes,  it  is  a  part  of  his  being.^ 

1  The  lack  of  clear  recognition  of  the  fundamental  idea  of  truth  in  Mr. 
William  James's  Pragmatism  is  perhaps  the  chief  fault  in  his  treatment. 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  329 

Consider,  again,  the  ideal  of  wedded  love.  There  is  nothing 
that  we  behold  more  real  and  yet  more  wonderful.  It  has  its 
rise  on  the  animal  side  of  us.  It  is  related  to  the  bodily  senses 
and  to  passion.  It  has  a  strange,  gross,  sensual  history  of  ages 
behind  it.  It  hardly  yet  more  than  fairly  emerges  into  the  higher 
consciousness  of  the  average  man.  The  woman  is  still  a  chattel 
or  plaything  in  the  eyes  of  multitudes  of  brutish  men.  Never- 
theless, here  stands  the  ideal  of  true  marriage  and  a  love  mutual, 
loyal,  devoted,  constant,  undying,  which  no  two  lovers  ever 
succeeded  altogether  in  compassing,  yet  without  which  real  love 
hardly  exists.  This  love  already  orders  thousands  of  homes.  It 
commands  the  consciences  of  a  host  of  people  who  only  feebly 
Hve  up  to  its  splendid  "ought."  It  brings  joy  and  satisfaction 
wherever  men  and  women  obey  it.  Under  its  beneficent  rule, 
the  passions  and  senses  themselves  are  at  their  highest  perfec- 
tion of  use,  and  children  are  born  under  auspices  most  favorable 
for  their  health  and  happiness.  The  word  "home"  gets  all  its 
wealth  of  significance  from  this  ideal  reahty  of  love. 

What,  now,  is  truth  in  the  marriage  relation  ?  It  does  not 
merely  mean  to  hold  to  a  verbal  promise  or  to  obey  the  laws  of 
the  state.  It  means  nothing  less  than  fitness  of  act  and  thought, 
and  of  temper  also,  to  an  ideal  standard  beyond  and  above  all 
words.  Once  seeing  this  ideal,  we  become  base  and  unworthy 
to  fall  away  from  it.  Who  in  England  had  a  loftier  sense  of  this 
reahty  than  Mr.  Huxley  had  ?  What  a  world  of  ethical  reality 
he  lived  in  and  belonged  to  ! 

Consider  a  moment  the  almost  new  sense  of  humane  social  re- 
lations that  slowly  tends  to  prevail  among  men.  You  can  al- 
ways make  out  a  case  for  the  grim  rule  of  selfishness,  more  or  less 
enlightened.  You  can  say  that  the  law  of  life  is  the  survival  of 
the  fittest ;  you  can  translate  human  realities  into  animal,  mili- 
tary, and  commercial  terms.  You  can  say,  ^"  Every  man  for 
himself,"  and  "Every  man  has  his  price."  Why  is  it  that  no 
man  can  ever  be  content  in  saying  such  things  ?  No  man  who  is 
a  man  really  believes  that  these  things  are  quite  true.  What, 
then,  do  we  all,  at  our  best,  hold  to  be  true  of  social  relations  ? 


330  CHARLES   FLETCHER  DOLE 

We  believe  in  an  unwritten  law,  quite  ideal,  beyond  the  range 
of  all  human  rewards  or  penalties.  This  law  bids  us  each  and 
all  to  share  our  good  things  with  one  another ;  it  bids  us  be  ready 
to  suffer  and  die  for  the  common  good  —  not  merely  for  the  na- 
tion, but  for  humanity,  for  those  whom  we  have  never  seen,  for 
those  unborn.  It  bids  us  let  our  own  selfish  will  go,  in  the  name 
of  a  imiversal  good  will.  It  sets  up  martyrs  rather  than  kings, 
Jesus  rather  than  Caesar,  Lincoln  and  not  Napoleon,  for  the  ad- 
miration of  the  world  There  is  no  true  man  who  does  not,  at 
his  best,  bow  to  this  kind  of  ideal.  Here  is  a  touch  of  the  infinite 
in  man.     There  is  no  finite  range  to  the  bounds  of  his  duty. 

There  is  a  philosophy  that  undertakes  to  explain  everything 
in  terms  of  mechanics.  Whatever  a  man  does,  or  thinks,  or  feels 
is  registered  in  the  changes  of  motion  in  nerve  cells.  First  comes 
the  change  in  a  cell,  as  the  man's  senses  are  moved  from  without 
and  then,  as  if  pulled  by  a  wire,  thought  and  consciousness  follow. 
No  one  doubts  the  fact  of  this  registry  of  deeds  and  thoughts. 
Does  it  explain  anything  ?  Does  it  not  rather  leave  a  world  of 
mystery  still  to  be  explained  ?  For  consciousness  is  infinitely 
more  wonderful  than  motion  or  mechanics,  which  in  no  way  ex- 
plain consciousness.  The  great  overpowering  fact  of  life  is  not 
the  mechanical  motion  in  a  man's  brain,  but  the  vast  range  of 
his  consciousness.  His  life,  however  related  to  the  brain  cells, 
is  not  real  life  at  all  till  it  rises  into  consciousness.  All  reality, 
in  fact,  lies  in  the  field  of  consciousness,  without  which  we  could 
not  even  know  anything  about  the  mechanics  of  motion  or  the 
elementary  differences  between  greater  and  less,  higher  and  lower, 
better  and  worse. 

Moreover,  so  far  as  consciousness  tells  any  truth,  it  tells  us  of 
moral  and  spiritual  sequences  that  daily  alter  the  flow  of  our  lives, 
and  in  the  aggregate  make  and  alter  the  meaning  of  history. 
The  story  of  a  hew,  a  bit  of  a  psalm,  "a  passage  from  Euripides," 
strikes  our  consciousness,  and  we  become,  at  least  for  the  moment, 
changed  men  in  our  conduct.  The  alteration  of  conduct,  itself 
touching  material  facts,  perhaps  costing  hard-earned  money,  or 
risking  labor  and  life,  is  a  spiritual  or  humane  or  social  change 


TRUTH   AND   IMMORTALITY  331 

in  us.  Its  value  consists  in  ideal  terms,  such  as  happiness,  con- 
tentment, satisfaction. 

We  have  used  the  word  "  happiness."  What  is  this  thing  that 
everyone  wants,  that  no  one  can  exactly  define,  that  begins  in 
the  plane  of  creature  comforts,  and  rises  into  all  manner  of  ideal 
relations  ?  Our  thought  of  what  truth  is  helps  us  to  answer  this 
question.  Truth  is  fitness,  harmony,  the  unison  of  relations. 
The  happy  life,  then,  is  the  life  in  which  all  the  parts  fit  and 
match  and  make  unity.  The  body  is  well  and  serves  the  man ; 
the  mind  is  sane,  the  conscience  is  enlightened  and  prompt  to 
act,  the  man  is  full  of  good  will,  expressing  itself  in  kindly  words 
and  generous  deeds.  In  short,  the  happy  life  conforms  to,  and 
corresponds  with,  an  ideal  beyond  and  above  itself,  never  yet 
exactly  seen,  but  the  most  real  furniture  that  exists  in  every  ma- 
ture man's  consciousness.  The  perfect  truth  of  manhood  is 
more  than  the  man  reaches,  yet  the  reality  of  the  man  himself 
consists  in  his  reaching  toward  this  truth  and  trying  to  fit  himself 
to  it.  His  highest  satisfaction  lies  in  this  effort.  In  this  type  of 
effort  all  the  experiences  of  his  life,  even  his  failures  and  sorrows, 
tend  to  blend  and  harmonize  into  the  unity  of  a  real  person. 
Consciousness  tells  us  nothing  more  sure  than  this,  and  the  more 
surely,  the  more  often  we  have  made  the  endeavor.  We  are 
happy,  we  reach  approximate  unity,  in  and  through  every  mo- 
ment of  hearty  good  will.  To  be  true  to  a  man's  standard  of 
manhood  is  the  essence  of  the  happy  life. 

Here  again,  as  before,  truth  is  both  a  and  x.  It  is  that  which 
fits  facts  which  we  have  experienced,  and  it  is  also  an  item  of 
faith  or  venture ;  it  is  that  which  fits  into  an  ideal  beyond  actual 
experience.  This  transcendental  element  of  truth,  this  venture 
from  the  known  towards  the  higher  and  unknown,  is  precisely 
what  gives  truth  its  character  of  reality. 

Another  idea  has  been,  and  is  still,  immensely  important  as  a 
factor  in  the  highest  human  activity.  It  is  the  idea  of  progress. 
It  is  related  intimately  to  the  great  scientific  thought  of  develop- 
ment and  evolution.  Men  think  that  the  world  is  better  than  it 
once  was,  and  they  believe  or  hope  that  it  will  grow  better.     This 


332  CHARLES   FLETCHER  DOLE 

is  not  an  unpractical  thought.  It  adds  value,  worth,  and  motive 
force  to  action.  It  is  a  spur  to  morality  and  the  noblest  forms  of 
devotion.  The  world  and  human  life  are  worth  more  in  a  world 
that  grows  better  than  in  a  world  that  has  stopped  growing  and 
may  even  be  on  the  decline.  Though  I  ought  to  be  just,  float- 
ing on  a  raft  and  waiting  to  be  annihilated,  yet  I  can  have  no 
enthusiasm  for  justice  in  such  a  condition.  Give  me  the  hope 
that  my  justice  may  bring  rescue  from  the  raft,  even  though  to 
save  others  at  my  own  loss,  and  my  whole  soul  rises  to  do  justice. 
So  men  are  stirred  to  activity  in  the  hope  of  human  progress,  not 
for  their  own  sake,  but  for  generations  to  come.  This  hope  of 
progress  moreover  is  illimitable.  Draw  a  line  anywhere  and 
put  an  end  to  it ;  translate  the  efforts  of  men  into  any  final  form 
of  death,  however  many  thousands  of  years  away,  and  the  heart 
goes  out  of  their  work.  There  is  an  infinite  element  in  the 
thought.  It  seems  to  point  to  something  beyond  the  terms  of 
mortal  life.  It  is  not  a,  however  multiplied,  but  a  plus  x.  The 
unknown  part  of  it  makes  it  true. 

We  have  already  suggested  the  bold  but  quite  necessary  ven- 
ture of  thought  that  we  make  in  speaking  of  a  world-order,  or 
"universe."  We  thereby  express  our  faith  that  all  things  fit  to- 
gether and  make  one  world.  Thus  all  the  sciences  are  one  science. 
Thus  all  processes  are  a  part  of  a  universal  order.  This  is  faith 
or  trust  quite  as  much  as  knowledge.  But,  as  Mr.  Tyndall  has 
happily  shown,  science  proceeds  by  leaps  of  inspired  imagination, 
and  arrives  at  its  conclusions  in  advance  of  its  ammunition  trains 
and  baggage  wagons.  Thus  faith  proceeds  in  the  face  of  super- 
ficial difficulties.  At  first  blush  no  one  sees  a  universe,  but  rather 
the  theater  of  conflicting  powers.  The  savage's  gods  are  in  con- 
flict. Yet  we  hold,  for  substance  of  truth,  that  all  forces  are  one. 
Doubt  this,  and  the  universe  itself  begins  to  dissolve,  and  truth 
to  disintegrate. 

The  mightiest  of  all  generalization  follows,  inextricably  in- 
volved throughout  with  all  that  we  have  said.  It  is  the  thought 
of  God.  The  word  or  name  is  of  little  moment.  We  take  such 
words  as  we  have  at  hand  —  only  symbols  at  best  for  a  concep- 


TRUTH   AND   IMMORTALITY  333 

tion  which  no  words  can  do  more  than  suggest.  Our  thought 
of  God  is  only  the  extension  and  perfecting  of  our  vision  of  a 
world-order  or  universe.  It  is  equally  necessary ;  it  grows  out 
of  the  other ;  it  is  born  of  and  arises  out  of  our  science  and  ex- 
perience. It  seems  compelled  upon  us  by  our  thought,  unless 
we  stop  thinking  altogether. 

Our  thought  of  God  is  the  expression  of  our  sense  of  the  neces- 
sary unity  of  all  the  values,  ideals,  and  standards  which  give 
meaning  to  life.  Order,  beauty,  intelligence,  goodness,  truth,  love, 
are  so  many  names  of  God.  They  all  seem  to  go  together.  The 
realm  of  beauty  is  not  alien  to  the  realm  of  righteousness,  but  one 
with  it.  The  realm  of  things  —  atoms,  forces,  motions  —  is  not 
alien  to  the  realm  of  consciousness,  thought,  order,  ideals,  jus- 
tice, goodness,  but  subsidiary  to  it  and  one  with  it. 

This  carries  us  further.  The  thought  of  God  means  that  the 
world  outside  and  within,  phenomena  and  consciousness  also, 
is  significant.  It  is  an  intelligible  world  —  intelligence  appealing 
to,  and  reflected  upon,  intelligence.  This  is  the  idea  that  men 
have  expressed  in  the  thought  of  a  purposeful  world.  They  have 
meant  to  express  the  conviction  that  no  blind  fate,  but  an  all- 
inspiring  reason,  ruled  the  universe.  They  meant  a  conviction 
that  the  universe  is  good,  not  evil  —  good  in  its  whirling  forces, 
good  on  the  side  of  its  omnipresent  beauty,  good  in  the  working 
of  its  supreme  intelligence.  They  meant  that  even  seeming  evil 
will  be  found,  when  once  we  know  enough,  to  fall  under  the  com- 
peUing  law  of  good. 

This  is  bold  to  think,  but  necessary  if  we  think  at  all.  We 
may  not  say  that  we  know  God  instinctively.  But  we  are  com- 
pelled by  the  quality  and  framework  of  our  intelligence  to  think 
in  the  terms  that  sooner  or  later  signify  God.  The  thought  of 
God,  in  the  ultimate  analysis,  is  imposed  on  our  thinking,  first, 
as  crudely  suggested  by  the  facts  of  life ;  then,  as  a  form  of  in- 
tellectual faith ;  then,  next,  as  required  to  meet  the  demands  of 
that  ideal  realm  of  ethics  and  truth  to  which  as  men  we  belong. 
World  forces  running  to  evil,  a  universal  intelligence  without 
purpose  or  meaning,  consciousness  everywhere  yet  void  of  reality, 


334  CHARLES   FLETCHER   DOLE 

beauty  everywhere  expressing  nothing  real  behind  it,  morality, 
virtue,  conscience,  and  duty  in  us  pressing  us  to  be  wilhng  to  die 
for  a  principle  or  an  ideal,  and  yet  nothing  moral  in  the  universe 
to  match  with  and  correspond  to  this  universal  pressure;  love 
in  us  rising  to  a  sense  of  infinite  devotion,  and  no  infinite  love 
above  or  beyond  us  —  these  things  do  not  fit  together,  are  not 
intelligible,  do  not  therefore  make  truth.  Our  thought  of  God 
is  our  way  of  affirming  that  the  universe  is  real,  is  one,  is  beauti- 
ful, is  good,  is  enduring. 

This  faith  in  the  truth  of  the  universe,  that  is,  in  God,  is  akin 
to  the  faith  that  we  have  in  ourselves.  We  are  a  mystery  and 
enigma  to  ourselves.  Where  are  we?  Who  are  we?  What  are 
the  bounds  of  our  personahty?  How  can  we  be  described  or 
defined  ?  And  yet  we  believe  in  ourselves,  the  invisible  persons, 
inhabiting  space,  using  atoms  and  forces,  and  dwelHng  in  con- 
sciousness. We  believe  in  ourselves,  the  microcosms,  much  as 
we  believe  in  God  as  the  universal  order.  We  are  what  we  are, 
and  real  persons,  by  virtue  of  thought,  beauty,  good  will,  unified 
together  and  entering  into  a  vast  conscious  or  vital  order  of  good- 
ness. 

We  deny  God,  and  we  presently  cut  at  the  roots  of  our  faith  in 
ourselves.  What  is  real,  if  the  universe  is  not  real  ?  What  is 
good,  if  the  Kfe  out  of  which  we  spring  and  of  which  man  at  his 
best  is  the  highest  and  most  illustrative  fruitage  that  we  know, 
is  not  good  ?  What  is  worth  while  —  science,  or  justice,  or  love, 
much  less  food  and  comfort  —  unless  the  standards  hold  good  by 
which  we  set  values  ?  Now  God  is  our  name  for  the  standards 
that  give  life  its  meaning. 

We  have  taken  a  very  long  circle  to  reach  the  idea  of  immor- 
tality. But  here  at  last  it  stands,  as  inevitable  as  any  of  the 
other  items  of  reality  which  go  to  constitute  life.  Truth,  we  see, 
is  that  which  fits  and  makes  harmony  and  unity.  It  is  whatever 
is  necessary  to  make  the  order  of  thought  complete  It  is  what- 
ever belongs  to  the  realm  of  reality.  Truth  is  not  merely  what 
we  see  embodied,  but  beyond  our  immediate  sight  —  what  our 
faith  in  the  ultimate  reality  foresees  by  anticipation.     This  fact 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  335 

has  held  good  at  every  step  which  we  have  taken.  Truth  was 
always  more  than  we  could  define  or  demonstrate.  It  was  also 
what  our  intelligence  demanded  in  order  to  fit  things  together 
and  make  sense  of  them. 

It  need  not  disturb  us  in  the  least  to  be  told  how  the  hope  of 
immortality  may  have  arisen.  Grant  that  it  had  its  origin  in 
material  sensations,  in  the  visions  of  savages,  in  the  repeating  of 
ghost  stories.  What  human  thought,  art,  or  science,  did  not 
thus  spring  out  of  the  earth,  and  take  material  shape  to  clothe 
itself  ?  The  indisputable  fact  remains  that  there  is  an  immate- 
rial, and  yet  real,  order  of  life,  which  characterizes  man  as  human. 
There  is  a  hierarchy  of  values,  leading  up  to  the  True,  the  Good, 
the  Beautiful.  We  cannot  throw  them  aside  or  contemn  them, 
and  keep  our  humanity.  We  cannot  belittle  truth  or  reason 
and  logic  —  the  architect's  plan  of  the  Cologne  Cathedral,  the 
builder  of  the  Brooklyn  Bridge,  the  painter  of  the  Dresden  Ma- 
donna, the  exiles  for  conscience'  sake  who  founded  America,  the 
integrity  of  honest  fathers,  the  love  of  our  mothers,  the  death  on 
the  Cross.  "Here  are  the  infinite  values,"  say  all  of  us,  or  else 
we  cease  to  be  men. 

We  belong  to  a  kingdom  of  values,  an  order  of  good,  a  uni- 
verse. Grant  this.  What  of  it  ?  We  cannot  think  then  that  a 
man  dies  like  a  fly,  and  that  is  the  end  of  him.  We  cannot  think 
that  the  sweet  mothers,  and  the  brave,  true-hearted  men  whom 
we  have  known,  are  of  no  more  use  in  the  order  of  the  universe 
than  the  whirling  dust  in  the  streets.  We  cannot  think  that  the 
life  of  this  planet,  with  its  gigantic  cost  in  blood  and  sorrow  and 
tears,  with  its  glorious  victories  of  truth,  freedom,  justice,  and 
love,  will  all  be  measured  up,  in  a  few  thousands  of  years,  in  the 
mute  story  of  the  moon  —  a  dead  world  without  a  conscious 
intelligence  to  shed  a  tear  over  it.  This  is  to  pronounce  the  doom 
of  the  universe,  to  break  the  order  and  beauty,  to  bring  intelli- 
gence to  confusion,  to  deny  serious  values,  and  to  dethrone 
reahty. 

The  intellect  in  us,  the  sense  of  right,  the  instinct  for  order, 
the  love  of  beauty  and  goodness  —  all  that  makes  us  worthy  as 


336  CHARLES   FLETCHER  DOLE 

men  —  the  reality  in  us  reacts  against  an  unreal  world.  The 
hope  of  immortality  is  our  sense  that  the  world  may  be  trusted, 
that  the  real  values  abide,  that  the  sum  of  all  life  is  not  death, 
but  life  yet  more  noble. 

This  is  not  a  strange  and  unscientific  statement.  It  is  quite 
like  the  statement  of  our  senses  touching  the  straightness  of  a  line 
or  the  beauty  of  a  face.  We  know  it,  but  we  cannot  prove  it  to  a 
blind  man.  The  standard  of  our  judgment  is  in  our  own  nature. 
The  one  thing  is  true  or  fits,  and  the  opposite  does  not  fit  or  cor- 
respond. We  cannot  help  trusting  this  judgment.  It  is  all  that 
we  have  to  trust.  Moreover,  in  this  instance,  as  with  the  judg- 
ment of  the  line  or  of  a  righteous  act,  there  tends  to  be  a  great  and 
growing  consensus  of  similar  judgment.  The  same  mind  every- 
where tends  to  see  something  real  in  the  hope  of  immortality. 

Another  harmony  now  appears.  We  have  seen  that  a  man 
has  a  certain  integrity  as  a  person.  At  his  best,  all  his  powers 
working  in  unison,  he  is  at  the  acme  of  efficiency  and  happiness. 
Three  great  spiritual  elements  go  to  make  such  a  man.  One 
is  faith,  or  trust,  for  example,  in  the  validity  of  law,  in  the  essen- 
tial righteousness  of  the  world,  in  the  humanity  of  one's  fellow- 
men  —  in  a  word,  in  a  good  God.  Another  element  of  the  com- 
plete life  is  love,  or  good  will.  The  man  at  his  best  pours  out, 
or  expresses,  his  good  will  in  all  his  acts  and  words,  in  his  face 
and  gestures.  Again,  the  man  needs  hope  in  order  to  be  at  his 
best.  He  will  work  best,  he  will  best  keep  his  health,  he  will  do 
most  good  to  his  fellows,  he  will  be  most  truly  a  man  with  hope 
in  his  eyes. 

We  do  not  say  what  the  object  of  his  hope  must  be.  It  surely 
need  not  be  selfish  or  personal.  But  it  must  be  worthy  of  his 
manhood  and  fit  the  terms  of  manhood.  We  will  not  insist  that 
his  hope  shall  rest  on  the  idea  of  immortality.  But  it  must  rest 
on  reality.  It  needs  to  go  up  into  the  ideal  realm  of  values, 
where  the  idea  of  the  infinite  and  the  immortal  belong.  The 
man  cannot  be  satisfied  for  long  with  any  hope  that  is  sentenced 
to  ultimate  death. 

Now  we  hold  that  whatever  is  essential  to  the  best  and  most 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  337 

harmonious  life  of  a  man,  without  which  he  is  reduced  in  his 
manhood,  deserves  to  be  trusted  as  true  or  real.  The  immense 
presumption  is  in  its  favor.  If  hope  is  one  element  of  life,  then 
there  is  that  which  corresponds  to  hope.  The  hope  is  entitled 
to  "the  benefit  of  the  doubt."  If  a  grand  hope  is  needful  to  a 
noble  life,  then  we  hold  that  whatever  substance  corresponds  to 
the  hope  wiU  be  noble  also.  True,  this  is  faith  again ;  but  the 
same  kind  of  faith  which  we  have  found  to  be  inseparable  from 
all  valid  thinking. 

We  are  often  asked  if  we  can  believe  in  personal  immortality. 
The  truth  is  that  in  the  highest  region  of  thought  all  terms  and 
definitions  are  inadequate.  We  felt  this  even  in  our  glimpse 
at  the  mystery  of  substance,  or  matter.  We  use  the  terms  atoms 
and  wave  motions  and  vortices,  not  as  sufficient  to  express  the 
reality,  but  as  the  best  modes  of  imaging  to  ourselves  the  nature 
of  the  reality  in  which,  in  some  sense,  we  firmly  beUeve.  Sub- 
stance, we  say,  seems  to  behave  like  groupings  of  orderly  atoms, 
or  like  whirling  forces.  It  behaves  as  if  waves  traversed  it.  So 
we  say  with  the  use  of  the  term  "personal  immortality."  This 
is  the  best  form  of  thought  we  know  to  express  our  sense  of 
the  abiding  reality  of  a  noble  life.  Thus  In  Memoriam  rises, 
in  the  face  of  all  doubt,  to  the  conviction  that  the  loved  friend 
can  never  die.  As  we  see  no  other  way  to  conceive  of  substance 
except  under  the  figure  of  some  form  which  we  know,  so  we  see 
no  possible  way  to  conserve  immortal  values  in  persons  except 
what  we  name  personal  immortality.  As  substance  may  prove 
to  be  more  valid  and  wonderful  than  any  of  our  figures  of  speech, 
so  immortality  may  prove  to  be  richer  and  more  satisfying  than 
our  name  for  it  suggests.  We  cannot  believe  it  to  be  less  than 
our  name  for  it.  Meanwhile  we  have  to  go  on  using  the  words 
that  serve  to  convey  the  utmost  positive  sense  of  reality.  That 
they  are  popular  words  does  not  hurt  their  value,  but  rather 
enhances  it.  Why  should  not  the  popular  instinct  go  in  the 
direction  of  the  best  constructive  and  philosophical  thought? 
Here  is  another  fitness  or  harmony  such  as  we  find  everywhere  in 
our  world.     What  kind  of  philosophy  —  that  is,  love  of  truth  — 


338  CHARLES   FLETCHER  DOLE 

would  it  be  that  proved  to  serve  no  end  except  to  destroy  man's 
sense  of  worth  and  reaUty  !  This  would  be,  in  the  name  of  truth, 
to  deny  the  existence  of  truth. 

We  have  proceeded  very  much  as  men  do  in  building  a  struc- 
ture, for  example,  an  archway.  We  have  used  the  best  material. 
We  have  set  the  base  of  our  structure  into  the  concrete  matter 
of  all  sorts  of  facts  of  life.  We  have  laid  logic  and  reason  for 
foundation  stones.  We  have  built  the  values  of  order,  beauty, 
justice,  truth,  humanity,  and  love  into  our  work.  We  have 
found  a  place  for  every  noble  experience  of  sympathy,  of  sorrow, 
of  victory,  for  every  aspiration,  for  every  mighty  standard.  All 
the  high  things  that  make  life  worth  living  are  in  our  structure. 
The  name  of  the  structure  is  the  universal  life ;  it  means  the  in- 
tegrity of  man  and  the  reality  of  God. 

There  is  just  one  stone  which  we  need  to  make  the  arch  com- 
plete. It  is  the  keystone  of  the  work.  It  is  small,  compared 
with  the  massive  foundation ;  one  might  possibly  think  that  the 
columns  would  stand  apart  by  themselves.  They  would  stand 
for  a  while  if  no  great  stress  were  put  on  the  work.  But  our 
sense  of  form  and  perfection,  that  is,  our  sense  of  truth  or  fitness, 
calls  for  the  keystone  in  order  to  join  the  piers  and  springers 
together.  Our  sense  of  necessity  also  and  our  knowledge  of  the 
action  of  forces  call  for  the  keystone.  Our  arch  will  never  be 
safe  till  we  have  put  that  one  binding  stone  into  place. 

So  we  judge  of  the  hope  of  immortality.  It  belongs  with  and 
fits  into  a  structure ;  it  is  that  without  which  you  can  never  make 
the  beauty  or  unity  last,  without  which  also  the  structure  tends 
to  fall  apart.  The  arch  is  not  yet  true  till  every  stone  fits  into 
place.  Put  the  hope  of  immortality  into  the  crown  of  the  values 
of  life,  and  they  cohere,  and  all  of  them  take  on  new  significance. 
Each  stone  built  into  the  structure  is  worth  more  than  it  is  worth 
by  itself  in  the  field.  Each  stone  is  worth  still  more  when  the 
structure  is  finished.  Refuse  your  keystone  the  place  for  which 
it  seems  to  be  fitted  exactly,  and  you  have  put  every  precious 
value  at  risk.  You  are  not  so  sure  of  a  good  God  any  longer. 
Human  life  is  no  longer  so  significant  as  it  was  before.     You  have 


TRUTH  AND   IMMORTALITY  339 

lost  worth  out  of  love  and  friendship,  and  leveled  them  toward 
the  dust.  You  have  reduced  patriotism  and  philanthropy  to 
finite  values,  each  with  its  price.  You  have  taken  buoyant  joy 
and  enthusiasm  out  of  all  mature  men's  Hfe,  and  threatened  them 
with  an  earlier  old  age.  You  have  shaken  the  bases  of  morality 
and  put  righteousness  into  terms  of  comfort  and  policy.  You 
have  bidden  the  artist,  the  poet,  and  the  prophet  laugh  at  their 
visions  and  doubt  their  validity.  You  have  distinctly  shaken 
man's  faith  in  logic  and  reason,  and  brought  all  intellectual  pro- 
cesses into  discredit.  For  all  that  logic  is  for  is  to  bind  things 
into  coherence  and  unity.  All  values,  in  fact,  belong  in  the 
ideal  realm ;  they  go  together  and  make  a  unity,  or  else  they  fall 
together. 

Fall  together  ?  No  !  No  man  can  make  the  great  values  fall, 
or  take  them  apart,  or  hurt  one  of  them.  A  man  can  hurt  and 
mar  his  own  life  by  his  distrust,  but  he  can  mar  no  reality.  No 
man's  doubt  can  make  justice,  beauty,  truth,  love,  less  than  real. 
These  things  are  ingrained  in  our  nature.  We  need  only  to 
trust  them.  They  constitute  an  infinite  order.  They  validate 
themselves  the  more  we  throw  our  weight  upon  them.  The 
hope  of  immortality  is  simply  the  keystone,  which  always  stands 
fast,  beyond  any  man's  doubt,  at  the  crown  of  the  structure.  It 
fits  its  companion  values,  and  they  clasp  it  with  their  arms  into  a 
serene  integrity.  They  bid  us  trust  our  lives  upon  the  archway, 
which  every  value  in  the  universe  has  joined  to  construct.  We 
did  not  build  the  beautiful  structure :  we  only  found  it. 

What  is  excellent. 
As  God  lives,  is  permanent. 

I  have  wished  to  make  it  plain  that  the  hope  of  immortality 
is  not  merely  the  concern  of  sentimentalists,  ready  to  hug  a 
pleasant  delusion,  much  less  of  egoists,  eagerly  grasping  after 
every  straw  of  selfish  comfort  for  themselves :  it  is  the  serious  con- 
cern of  all  men  who  have  other  values  at  heart  besides  pleasures 
and  money;  of  all  who  care  for  law  and  order,  for  true  homes, 
for  just  government,  and  friendly  society  among  men ;  of  all  who 


340  CHARLES   FLETCHER  DOLE 

love  their  fellows  and  struggle  for  human  progress,  having  faith 
that  such  struggle  is  worth  while;  of  all  who  love  beauty,  and 
find  a  noble  worth  in  art  and  music ;  of  all  who  think  sanely,  and 
have  any  sort  of  faith  in  a  good  universe  —  the  poets,  the  artists, 
the  thinkers,  the  statesmen,  the  multitude  also  of  modest  and 
high-minded  men  and  women  whose  religion  consists  in  acts  of 
faith,  hope,  and  love.  The  companionship  of  such  persons,  the 
memory  of  such  persons,  their  faith  and  their  deeds,  bring  you 
into,  and  leave  you  in,  an  attitude  of  hope.  This  world  would 
not  be  a  quite  true  world  with  the  hope  of  immortality  left  out. 
This  world  needs  nothing  less  than  the  hope  of  immortality  in 
order  to  complete  its  integrity. 


XII 

LAW   AND   JUSTICEi 
Leonard  Trelawney  Hobhouse 

[Leonard  Trelawney  Hobhouse  (1864-)  has  been  since  1907  professor  of 
sociology  in  London  University.  His  place  in  the  world  of  contemporary 
thought  is  secured  by  unusual  breadth  of  intellectual  vision  and  remarkable 
command  of  branches  of  study  collateral  with  those  in  which  he  is  specially 
interested.  As  a  philosopher  he  is  known  principally  through  his  Theory  of 
Knowledge,  and  as  a  psychologist,  through  his  Mind  in  Evolution.  His  socio- 
logical studies,  however,  particularly  Morals  in  Evolution  and  Social  Evolu- 
tion and  Political  Theory,  have  probably  brought  his  name  more  prominently 
before  the  intelligent  reading  pubUc.  It  may  be  inferred  from  the  titles  of 
Professor  Hobhouse 's  works  that  their  strength  lies  in  an  exceptionally  keen 
analysis  of  the  bearing  of  evolutionary  science  upon  the  entire  history  of 
man  and  his  institutions ;  this  is  illustrated  impressively  in  his  use  of  an 
enormous  mass  of  scientific  evidence  frorp  fields  whose  connection  with  his 
own  is  not  always  apparent  to  the  casual  student,  and  whose  whole  domain 
can  be  covered  only  by  a  scholar  of  exceptional  erudition. 

Law  and  Justice,  which  is  the  third  chapter  of  Morals  in  Evolution,  pub- 
lished in  1906,  is  an  endeavor  to  trace  from  their  beginnings  in  the  most 
primitive  society  our  modern  conceptions  of  the  legal  and  judicial  func- 
tions of  the  state.  It  is  necessary  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  a 
great  amount  of  illustrative  historical  and  anthropological  evidence  which 
is  given  as  footnotes  in  Professor  Hobhouse's  volume  has  been  omitted 
here.  That  these  notes  are  both  very  valuable  and  very  interesting  goes 
without  saying ;  but  their  bulk  makes  it  impossible  to  reproduce  them  in 
this  volume,  save  in  a  few  cases  where  they  are  quite  indispensable  to  the 
text.] 

I.  To  the  civilized  man  it  seems  the  merest  truism  to  say  that 
the  business  of  Government  is  to  make  and  execute  laws,  to  see 
that  crime  is  suppressed,  and  that  its  subjects  are  maintained  in 

1  Reprinted  by  permission  from  Morals  in  Evolution,  by  L.  T.  Hobhouse 
(Henry  Holt  and  Co.). 

341 


342  LEONARD   TRELAW^^EY  HOBHOUSE 

possession  of  their  just  rights.  Not  only  so,  but  the  broad  lines 
upon  which  justice  is  administered  are  to  him  so  familiar  and  seem 
so  clearly  marked  out  by  reason  and  common  sense  that  if  he  were 
to  think  of  their  origin  at  all  he  would  naturally  imagine  that 
here,  if  anywhere,  we  had  to  do  with  simple  and  elementary  moral 
ideas,  implanted  in  men  by  nature,  and  needing  no  training  nor 
experience  to  perfect  them.  Thus,  what  could  be  more  ob\ious 
to  begin  with  than  the  distinction  of  civil  and  criminal  justice  ? 
A  may  trespass  upon  the  rights  of  B,  but  he  may  do  so  without 
fraud,  violence,  or  any  criminal  intent.  In  such  cases,  the  loss 
suffered  by  B  must  be  made  good,  but  no  further  punishment 
should  faU  upon  A.  That  is,  there  is  ground  for  a  ci\dl  action. 
Or,  on  the  other  hand,  in  injuring  B,  A  may  have  committed  an 
offense  against  the  social  order.  In  that  case  he  must  be  pun- 
ished as  a  criminal,  and  is  not  to  escape  merely  by  making  good 
the  loss  inflicted  on  B.  He  has  offended  society,  and  society  in- 
sists on  punishing  him.  But,  further,  if  A  is  a  wTongdoer,  it  must 
be  proved  that  he  is  a  responsible  agent.  He  must  have  done 
wrong  with  intention,  and,  if  so,  he  alone  ought  to  suffer. 
Socially,  no  doubt,  his  fall  must  affect  his  innocent  wife  and 
children,  but  this  is  a  regrettable  result,  not  a  consequence  which 
the  law  goes  about  to  inflict.  Lastly,  whether  in  a  civil  or  crimi- 
nal case,  the  function  of  the  law  is  to  set  up  an  impartial  author- 
ity, before  whom  the  question  is  argued.  Both  sides  are  heard. 
E\ddence  is  cited,  and  witnesses  called,  whose  testimony  the 
court  is  free  to  sift  and  weigh.  FormaUties  and  rules  have  to  be 
observed,  but  apart,  perhaps,  from  some  which  are  archaic,  they 
are  de\dsed  mainly  as  safeguards  against  wrongful  decisions,  and 
the  real  business  of  the  inquiry  is  to  get  at  truth  as  to  the  mate- 
rial facts.  In  the  end,  the  decision  being  given,  the  court  can 
freely  use  the  executive  power  of  Government  to  enforce  it. 

Elementary  as  all  this  sounds,  it  is,  historically  speaking,  the 
result  of  a  long  evolution.  The  distinction  between  cival  and 
criminal  law,  the  principle  of  strictly  indi\ddual  responsibih'ty, 
the  distinction  between  the  intentional  and  the  unintentional, 
the  conception  of  the  court  as  an  impartial  authority  to  try  the 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  343 

merits  of  the  case,  the  exclusive  reliance  on  evidence  and  testi- 
mony, the  preference  of  material  to  formal  rectitude,  the  execu- 
tion of  the  court's  decision  by  a  public  force  —  all  are  matters 
very  imperfectly  understood  by  primitive  peoples,  and  their 
definite  establishment  is  the  result  of  a  slow  historical  process. 
Perhaps  no  other  department  of  comparative  ethics  gives  so 
vivid  an  idea  of  the  difficulty  which  humanity  has  found  in 
establishing  the  simple  elements  of  a  just  social  order. 

2.  The  growth  of  law  and  justice  is  pretty  closely  connected 
in  its  several  stages  with  the  forms  of  social  organization  that 
have  been  described.  In  quite  the  lowest  races  there  is,  as  we 
have  seen,  scarcely  anything  that  is  strictly  to  be  called  the 
administration  of  justice.  Private  wrongs  are  revenged  by 
private  individuals,  and  any  one  whom  they  can  get  to  help 
them.  The  neighbors  interfere  in  the  least  possible  degree, 
and  how  far  a  man's  family,  or  the  wider  group  to  which  he 
belongs,  will  stand  by  him,  is  a  question  which  is  decided  in 
each  particular  case  as  its  own  merits,  or  the  inclinations  of 
those  concerned,  direct.  But  even  at  a  very  low^  stage  this 
uncertain  and  fitful  action  begins  to  take  a  more  definite  shape. 
We  find  something  that  corresponds  roughly  to  our  own  adminis- 
tration of  justice,  and  from  the  outset  we  find  it  in  two  broadly 
distinct  cases.  There  are  occasions  upon  which  a  whole  com- 
munity will  turn  upon  an  offender  and  expel  him,  or  put  him  to 
death.  Sometimes,  indeed,  this  is  merely  a  kind  of  lynch  law 
directed  against  a  man  who  makes  himself  unbearable,  or  com- 
mits some  crime  w^hich  touches  a  general  feeling  of  resentment 
into  life.  But  beyond  this  there  are  at  almost,  if  not  quite, 
the  lowest  stages  certain  actions  which  are  resented  as  involving 
the  community  as  a  whole  in  misfortune  and  danger.  These 
include,  besides  actual  treason,  conduct  which  brings  upon  the 
people  the  wrath  of  God,  or  of  certain  spirits,  or  which  violates 
some  mighty  and  mysterious  taboo.  The  actions  most  fre- 
quently regarded  in  this  light  are  certain  breaches  of  the  mar- 
riage laws  and  witchcraft.  The  breaches  of  the  marriage  law 
which  come  in  question  here  are  confined  to  those  transgre.s- 


344  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

sions  of  the  prohibitions  of  intermarriage,  upon  which  primitive 
races  lay  such  extraordinary  stress.  A  mere  violation  of  the 
marriage  tie  is  generally  in  savage  society  a  private  matter, 
avenged  by  the  husband  alone,  or  by  those  whose  duty  it  is  to 
help  him ;  but  a  breach  of  the  rules  of  exogamy,^  a  marriage 
within  the  totem,  for  example,  or  a  marriage  outside  the  per- 
missible class,  is  regarded  as  an  offense  endangering  the  com- 
munity herself,  and  only  to  be  wiped  out  by  the  extinction  of  the 
offender.  A  Central  Australian  tribe,  for  instance,  which  has  no 
regular  means  of  enforcing  any  law,  will  make  up  a  war  party 
to  spear  the  man  and  woman  who  have  married  in  defiance  of 
these  customs.  Similarly,  common  action  will  often  be  taken  to 
protect  the  community  from  witchcraft,  obviously  a  terrible  of- 
fense in  a  society  which  firmly^  believes  in  it.  Among  the 
North  American  Indians  a  pubHc  sentence  was  often  pronounced 
and  carried  out  by  the  chiefs  in  cases  of  sorcery,  and  sometimes 
also  in  cases  of  cowardice  or  breaches  of  the  marriage  customs. 
The  punishment  of  witchcraft  is  as  widespread  as  the  fear  of  it, 
and,  prompted  as  it  is  by  the  sense  of  a  danger  to  the  whole 
community,  is  often  peculiarly  ferocious,  and  directed  to  the 
destruction  of  every  one  connected  with  the  offender. 

The  object  of  the  community  in  exterminating  the  criminal  is 
not  so  much  to  punish  the  wicked  man  as  to  protect  itself  from 
a  danger,  or  purge  itself  from  a  curse.  Achan  takes  the  accursed 
thing,  the  thing  which  had  been  devoted  to  Jahveh.  The  taboo 
on  the  thing  devoted  is  at  once  communicated  to  Achan  himself 
as  though  it  were  a  poison  or  an  infection,  or,  to  take  another 
metaphor,  a  charge  of  electricity.  It  passes  from  the  spoil 
appropriated  to  the  appropriator,  and  no  resource  remains  but 
to  devote  Achan  with  all  his  family  and  belongings,  everything, 
in  fact,  which  the  accursed  thing  had  infected.  The  Roman 
criminal,  if  his  offense  bore  a  rehgious  character,  was  "sacer" 
—  separated  from  men,  made  over  to  the  offended  deities.  His 
goods  were  set  apart  (consecratio  bonoru'm),ior  they  were  involved 

1  The  custom  of  prohibiting  marriage  among  members  of  the  same  tribe 
or  clan. —  Editors. 


LAW  AND  JUSTICE  345 

in  his  impurity.  He  was  banished,  so  that  none  might  come  into 
contact  with  his  accursed  person.  He  was  cut  off  from  fire  and 
water,  not  primarily  because  fire  and  water  were  necessary  to 
his  life,  so  that  he  was  sentenced  to  death  by  being  deprived  of 
them,  but  rather  for  fear  that  his  accursed  touch  should  pollute 
the  sacred  elements  and  convey  the  pollution  to  others.  That 
the  criminal  suffered  in  consequence  was  a  satisfactory  collateral 
effect,  but  the  main  thing  was  to  secure  the  fire  and  water  from 
pollution. 

Thus  far,  then,  public  punishments,  where  they  are  any  more 
than  an  explosion  of  indignant  feeling,  maybe  regarded  as  public 
action  taken  for  the  sake  of  pubHc  safety.  The  community  is 
threatened  with  palpable  treason,  or  with  occult  magic  influence, 
or  by  the  wrath  of  the  gods.  It  protects  itself  by  destroying  the 
traitor,  or  sacrificing,  or,  at  any  rate,  getting  rid  of,  the  witch. 
It  is  a  kind  of  public  hygiene  rather  than  a  dispensation  of  jus- 
tice which  is  in  question. 

3.  With  the  redress  of  wrongs,  the  maintenance  of  private 
rights,  and  the  punishment  of  the  bulk  of  ordinary  offenses,  it  is 
different.  For  these  purposes  primitive  society  has  no  adequate 
organization.  Administration  of  justice  in  this  sense  is  in  the 
main  a  private  matter.  It  is  for  the  sufferer  to  obtain  redress 
or  to  avenge  himself,  and  in  the  lowest  stages  of  all  the  vengeance 
is,  as  we  have  seen,  casual,  arbitrary  and  unsystematized.  But 
as  the  family  and  the  clan  acquire  definite  and  coherent  struc- 
ture a  systematic  method  of  redress  grows  up.  The  leading 
characteristics  of  this  method  are  two  —  (i)  that  redress  is 
obtained  by  retaliation,  and  (2)  that  owing  to  the  solidarity  of 
the  family  the  sufferer  will  find  support  in  obtaining  the  redress 
that  he  seeks.  The  individual  man,  woman,  or  child  no  longer 
stands  by  himself  or  herself,  but  can  count  with  considerable  cer- 
tainty on  the  protection  of  his  relatives,  who  are  bound  to  avenge 
a  wrong  done  to  him,  or  to  stand  by  him  in  exacting  vengeance 
by  every  tie  of  honor  and  religion.  In  other  words,  this  is  the 
stage  of  the  blood  feud.  "He  that  sheddeth  man's  blood,  by 
man  shall  his  blood  be  shed,"  is  the  earliest  law  given  in  the  Old 


346  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY   HOBHOUSE 

Testament,  and  on  this  point  the  Old  Testament  may  be  said 
to  be  a  faithful  reflection  of  the  historical  facts. 

Though  the  blood  feud  is  an  expression  of  vengeance,  this  ven- 
geance is  by  no  means  wholly  without  regulations  and  rules  of 
its  own.  There  is  a  rough  justice  recognizable  in  its  working, 
though  it  is  not  the  justice  of  an  impartial  third  person  surveying 
the  facts  as  a  whole.  There  is  no  question  of  a  just  judge  ren- 
dering each  man  his  due,  but  rather  of  a  united  kin  sympathizing 
with  the  resentment  of  an  injured  relation  when  expressing  itself 
in  certain  traditional  forms.  Justice  as  we  understand  it  —  the 
rendering  to  each  man  his  due  as  judged  by  an  impartial  author- 
ity—  is  not  distinctly  conceived  as  a  social  duty  in  primitive 
ethics,  and  that  is  what,  morally  speaking,  differentiates  the 
primitive  ethical  consciousness  from  the  ethical  consciousness  at 
a  higher  stage  of  development.  Yet  primitive  ethics  works  upon 
rules  in  which  a  certain  measure  of  justice  is  embodied.  Thus  in 
the  first  place  custom  prescribes  certain  rules  of  retaliation  which 
are  recognized  as  right  and  proper  and  have  the  approval  of  the 
neighbors  and  clansmen.  The  simplest  and  earliest  of  these 
rules  is  the  famous  Lex  Talionis,  "An  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a 
tooth  for  a  tooth,"  famihar  to  us  from  the  chapter  of  Exodus,  but 
far  earlier  than  Exodus  in  its  first  formulation.  We  find  it,  like 
many  other  primitive  rules  of  law,  in  the  recently  discovered 
code  of  King  Hammurabi, ^  which  is  earHer  than  the  Book  of  the 
Covenant  perhaps  by  1300  years,  and  we  find  it  at  the  present 
day  among  people  sociologically  at  an  earlier  stage  of  develop- 
ment than  the  Babylonians  of  the  third  millennium  before  Christ. 
We  find  it  applicable  to  bodily  injuries,  to  breaches  of  the  mar- 
riage law,  and  perhaps  we  may  say  in  the  rules  of  the  twofold 
restitution  for  theft  and  in  the  symbolic  form  of  mutilating  the 
offending  member  even  to  the  case  of  offenses  against  property. 
In  some  cases,  the  idea  of  exact  retaliation  is  carried  out  with  the 
utmost  literalness  —  a  grotesque  literalness  sometimes,  as  when 
a  man  who  has  killed  another  by  falling  on  him  from  a  tree  is 
himself  put  to  death  by  exactly  the  same  method  —  a  relation 
1  A  Babylonian  legal  code  of  about  2250  B.C. —  Editors. 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  347 

of  the  deceased  solemnly  mounting  the  tree  and  much,  one 
would  say,  at  his  own  risk,  descending  upon  the  offender.  More 
often,  of  course,  vengeance  is  simpler.  Stripes,  mutilation,  or 
death  are  inflicted  without  any  attempt  to  imitate  the  original 
offense,  though  there  may  very  well  be  a  grading  of  the  ven- 
geance in  proportion  to  the  original  wrong.  The  homicide  is 
slain,  the  adulterer  speared,  beaten,  or  mutilated,  the  thief  slain, 
enslaved,  or  forced  to  make  restitution,  the  defaulting  debtor 
enslaved  or  flogged. 

4.  But  at  a  fairly  early  stage  in  the  growth  of  social  order  a 
fresh  principle  is  introduced  tending  to  mitigate  the  blood  feud 
and  so  maintain  peace  and  harmony.  For  the  special  vice  of  the 
system  of  retahation  is  that  it  provides  no  machinery  for  bringing 
the  quarrel  to  an  end.  If  one  of  the  Bear  totem  is  killed  by  a 
Hawk,  the  Hawk  must  be  killed  by  one  of  the  Bears,  but  it  by 
no  means  follows  that  this  will  end  the  matter,  for  the  Hawks 
may  now  stand  by  their  murdered  clansman  and  take  the  life 
of  a  second  Bear  in  revenge,  and  so  the  game  goes  on,  and  we 
have  a  true  course  of  vendetta.  Accordingly,  peaceable  souls 
with  a  view  to  the  welfare  of  both  families,  perhaps  with  the 
broader  view  of  happiness  and  harmony  within  the  community, 
intervene  with  a  suggestion  of  peace.  Let  the  injured  Bears 
take  compensation  in  another  form,  let  them  take  cattle  or  other 
things  to  make  good  the  loss  of  the  pair  of  hands  which  served 
them.  In  a  word,  let  the  payment  of  damages  be  a  salve  to 
vindictive  feelings.  In  that  way,  the  incident  may  come  to  an 
end  and  peace  will  reign.  When  such  a  practice  becomes  a  cus- 
tomary institution,  we  enter  upon  the  stage  of  composition  for 
offenses,  a  stage  pecuHarly  characteristic  of  the  settling  down  of 
barbarous  tribes  into  a  peaceable  and  relatively  civilized  state, 
and  especially  of  the  growth  of  the  power  of  a  chief  whose  influ- 
ence is  often  exerted  to  enforce  the  expedient  of  composition 
upon  a  reluctant  and  revengeful  family.  As  the  institution  takes 
shape  a  regular  tariff  is  introduced,  so  much  for  an  injury,  so 
much  for  the  loss  of  an  eye,  so  much  for  a  life.  Often  a  distinc- 
tion between  classes  of  crime  appears.     For  some  it  is  the  rule 


348  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

that  composition  should  be  accepted.  Others  are  recognized  as 
too  grave  to  be  washed  out  except  by  blood.  Thus  among  the 
German  tribes  murder  and  rape  excited  blood  revenge,  while  other 
injuries  were  punishable  by  fine,  and  the  fine  is  significantly 
caj led  ' '  f aida, ' '  as  being  the  feud  commuted  for  money.  The  dis- 
tinction lasted  into  the  Middle  Ages,  even  in  a  period  when  the 
fine  or  a  part  of  it  went  to  the  king.  Our  Leges  Henrici  still  dis- 
tinguish emendable  offenses,  in  which  sacrilege  and  willful  homi- 
cide without  treachery  are  included,  from  unemendable  offenses 
such  as  housebreaking,  arson,  open  theft,  aggravated  homicide, 
treason  against  one's  lord,  and  breach  of  the  church's  or  the 
king's  peace.  These  are  crimes  which  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  term 
had  no  bot  —  no  bot  or  money  payment  atoned  for  them  — 
they  were  bot-less,  boot-less.  Even  when  the  bot  was  payable, 
it  stood  at  first  at  the  discretion  of  the  injured  family  to  accept 
or  reject  it,  and  we  find  the  Germanic  codes  in  the  early  Middle 
Ages  setting  themselves  to  insist  on  its  acceptance  as  a  means  of 
keeping  the  peace.  If  the  fine  is  not  forthcoming,  of  course  the 
feud  holds. 

But  when  injuries  are  being  assessed,  not  only  must  there  be 
a  distinction  between  the  injuries  themselves,  but  also  between 
the  persons  injured.  There  must  be  a  distinction  of  rank,  age, 
sex;  a  free-born  man  is  worth  more  than  a  slave,  a  grown-up 
person  than  a  child,  generally  speaking,  a  man  than  a  woman,  a 
chief  or  person  of  rank  than  a  free  man.  And  so  we  have  the 
system  of  "wergilds"  ^  familiar  to  us  in  the  early  stages  of  our  own 
history,  and  again  recognizable  in  the  code  of  Hammurabi.  In 
one  form  or  another  the  system  of  composition  prevails  or  has 
prevailed  almost  to  this  day  over  a  great  part  of  the  barbaric 
world,  among  the  North  American  Indians,  in  the  Malay  Archi- 
pelago, in  New  Guinea,  among  the  Indian  hill  tribes,  among  the 
Calmucks  and  Kirghis  of  the  steppes  of  Asia,  among  the  rude 
tribes  of  the  Caucasus,  the  Bedouins  of  the  Arabian  desert,  the 
Somali  of  East  Africa,  the  negroes  of  the  West  Coast,  the  Congo 
folk  of  the  interior,  the  Kaffirs  and  Basutos  of  the  South. 
^  Payments  to  compromise  the  shedding  of  blood. —  Editors. 


LAW  AND  JUSTICE  349 

5,  Primitive  vengeance,  then,  may  be  exacted  by  retaliation 
or  compounded  by  money  payments.  In  either  method  a  rough 
justice  is  embodied,  but  it  is  justice  enforced  by  the  strong  hand. 
Even  graver  differences  separating  barbaric  vengeance  from  civi- 
Hzed  justice  have  now  to  be  mentioned.  These  differences  are 
inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  social  organization  upon  which  the 
blood  feud  rests.  For  the  blood  feud  is  retribution  exercised  by 
a  family  upon  a  family ;  it  rests  upon  the  support  which  each 
individual  can  count  upon  from  his  own  immediate  relations, 
possibly  from  his  whole  clan ;  it  rests,  in  a  word,  upon  the 
solidarity  of  the  kindred.  But  the  effect  of  this  solidarity  upon 
the  working  of  retributive  justice  is  by  no  means  wholly  favor- 
able. In  the  first  place  it  has  the  effect  that  the  lives  of  members 
of  other  clans  are  held  indifferent.  A  perfect  illustration  is  af- 
forded by  the  Ungani  Nagas,  a  tribe  of  the  northeast  frontier  of 
India,  who  live  in  villages  composed  of  two  or  more  "khels," 
as  their  clans  are  called,  which,  though  living  side  by  side  and  in- 
termarrying, are  for  purposes  of  defense  independent  communi- 
ties. A  hostile  tribe  may  descend  upon  the  village  and  massacre 
all  the  members  of  one  "khel"  while  the  other  "khels"  sleep 
peacefully  in  their  beds  and  do  not  raise  hand  or  foot  to  protect 
their  neighbors.  This  is  cold-blooded,  but  it  is  not  without  a 
certain  reason.  The  exterminated  "khel"  has  incurred  a  feud 
from  which  the  others  are  free.  If  they  rise  in  its  defense  they 
not  only  incur  the  danger  of  the  present  fight,  but  they  also  in- 
volve themselves  in  the  permanent  feud.  Next,  in  so  far  as 
justice  rests  on  the  blood  feud,  and  the  blood  feud  is  of  the  nature 
of  a  private  war  between  distinct  families  or  clans,  it  follows  that 
public  justice  will  not  deal  with  offenses  committed  within  the 
family.  These  do  not  excite  the  blood  feud.  In  some  cases,  no 
fixed  punishment  appears  to  be  assigned  for  them,  but  this  may 
happen  not  only  because  they  do  not  belong  to  the  province  of 
public  custom,  but  also,  perhaps,  because  they  are  too  rare  for 
any  definite  custom  to  have  arisen  for  dealing  with  them.  Like 
parricide  among  the  Romans,  they  represent  the  absolute  ulti- 
mate of  human  wickedness.     Further,  generally  speaking,  there 


350  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

is  no  need  for  any  recognizable  general  rule,  because  offenses 
within  the  family  are  dealt  with  by  the  arbitrary  justice  of  the 
paterfamilias  or  of  the  kin  collectively,  who,  even  if  other  means 
of  enforcing  authority  failed,  have  always  the  ready  remedy  of 
outlawry,  which  puts  the  offender  at  the  mercy  of  the  first  comer. 
Outlawry  from  the  clan  is  the  most  effective  of  all  weapons,  be- 
cause in  primitive  society  the  exclusion  of  a  man  from  his  kins- 
folk means  that  he  is  delivered  over  to  the  first  comer  absolutely 
without  protection.  An  illustration  may  be  drawn  from  the 
early  history  of  Mohammed's  teaching,  when  the  Korais,  who 
found  that  Mohammed's  gospel  was  very  inimical  to  their  gains, 
wanted  above  all  things  to  put  him  out  of  the  way  and  made  the 
most  strenuous  efforts  to  induce  Mohammed's  uncle,  who  was 
head  of  the  clan,  to  disown  him.  Had  the  uncle  consented,  Mo- 
hammed would  have  been  left  without  protection  and  might  have 
been  dispatched  by  any  one  without  fear  of  consequences,  but 
till  the  death  of  the  uncle  the  clan  stood  by  him ;  and  the  leading 
men  of  Mecca,  powerful  as  they  were,  were  not  bold  enough  to 
take  upon  themselves  a  blood  feud  with  Mohammed's  family. 
The  fear  of  the  blood  feud  is  the  great  restraint  upon  disorder  in 
primitive  society,  and  conversely  he  whose  death  will  excite  no 
blood  feud  has  no  legal  protection. 

So  far  the  negative  side  of  clan  justice.  The  positive  side  has 
peculiarities  not  less  startling  to  the  modern  mind,  for  since  it  is 
a  member  of  one  body  who  has  done  a  wrong  to  a  member  of  an- 
other body,  the  whole  body  to  which  the  offending  member  be- 
longs is  held  responsible  by  the  whole  body  to  which  the  injured 
member  belongs ;  and  it  is  not  merely  the  original  criminal  who 
may  be  punished,  but  logically  any  member  of  his  family  may 
serve  as  a  substitute.  Responsibility  is  collective,  and  therefore 
also  vicarious.  Sometimes  the  whole  family  of  the  offender  is 
destroyed  with  him.  Sometimes  any  relation  of  the  offender  may 
suffer  for  him  vicariously.  John,  who  has  done  the  deed,  being 
out  of  reach,  primitive  vengeance  is  quite  satisfied  with  the  life  of 
Thomas,  his  son,  or  brother,  or  cousin.  Just  as  in  the  blind- 
ness of  warfare  the  treacherous  act  of  an  enemy  is  generalized 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  351 

and  perhaps  avenged  in  the  next  battle  by  a  retahation  which 
does  not  stay  to  ask  whether  it  is  falKng  on  the  innocent  or  the 
guilty,  so  in  the  primitive  blood  feud.  The  wrong  done  is  the 
act  of  the  family  or  clan  to  which  the  aggressor  belongs,  and  may 
be  avenged  on  any  member  of  that  family  or  clan.  Sometimes 
the  retaliation  is  made  more  specific  by  a  fresh  application  of  the 
Lex  Talionis,  and  to  the  rule  "eye  for  eye,"  there  is  the  pendant 
"son  for  son,  daughter  for  daughter,  slave  for  slave,  ox  for  ox." 
You  have  slain  my  son  ?  Then  the  true  and  just  retribution  is 
that  I  should  slay  yours.  It  is  my  daughter  who  is  slain  ?  Then 
it  is  with  your  daughter  that  you  must  pay  for  her.  Sometimes 
vengeance  is  specially  directed  against  the  chief  as  representing 
the  clan.  Sometimes  it  may  be  visited  on  any  male,  or  even  on 
any  adult  member  of  the  clan,  children  alone  being  excluded. 
Sometimes  this  last  shred  of  humanity  is  torn  away.  The  prin- 
ciple is  pushed  to  its  furthest  and  most  revolting  development 
among  the  head-hunting  tribes  common  in  southeast  Asia,  in 
which  magical  ideas  combine  with  those  of  revenge,  and  the  skull 
of  the  enemy  has  a  potency  of  its  own  which  makes  its  possession 
desirable  in  itself.  The  head  of  a  child  or  woman  of  the  hostile 
body  is  no  less  coveted  an  object  than  that  of  the  fighting  warrior, 
and  is  probably  easier  to  obtain.  When  the  principle  of  compo- 
sition arises  collective  responsibility  is  reduced,  by  a  less  barba- 
rous logic,  to  a  common  pecuniary  liability.  The  clan  are  col- 
lectively responsible  for  the  blood  money  due  from  a  member,  and 
by  the  same  logic  they  are  the  collective  recipients  of  blood  money 
due  to  any  member.  And  as  with  blood  money  so  with  other 
debts.  There  is  a  collective  liability  —  a  conception  which  in 
this  softened  form  has  its  uses  in  the  social  order,  and  is 
in  fact  enforced  and  applied  to  the  commune  —  though  in 
right  it  belongs  rather  to  the  clan  —  by  many  Oriental 
governments. 

6.  Further,  with  the  theory  of  collective  responsibility  goes  al- 
most necessarily  the  failure  to  distinguish  between  accident  and 
design.  In  primitive  society  the  real  gravamen  of  a  charge 
against  an  aggressor  is  that  he  has  done  an  injury.     How  he  did 


352  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY   HOBHOUSE 

the  injury,  whether  of  set  purpose  or  by  accident,  is  a  matter  of 
less  moment.  My  son,  or  brother,  or  cousin,  or  clansman,  is 
killed ;  that  is  enough  for  me ;  I  must  have  some  satisfaction  out 
of  the  man  who  did  it,  and,  what  is  more,  my  family  must  have 
some  satisfaction  out  of  his  family.  Futhermore,  the  whole  dis- 
tinction between  design  and  accident  is  by  no  means  so  clear  to 
primitive  man  as  it  is  to  us,  for  though  it  needs  little  reflection 
and  a  very  moderate  amount  of  self-knowledge  to  distinguish 
between  what  one  has  done  one's  self  by  accident  or  by  design, 
and  a  very  moderate  degree  of  reasoning  power  to  apply  the  dis- 
tinction to  other  men  —  still,  the  nascent  reflection  of  the  savage 
is  strangled  at  birth  by  the  prevailing  theory  of  witchcraft  and 
possession.  If  a  tree  falls  upon  a  man's  head  the  savage  holds 
that  a  spirit  guided  it.  If  a  man,  cutting  a  branch  from  a  tree, 
dropped  his  ax  on  to  another's  head,  it  may  not  have  been  the 
man's  own  soul  which  guided  the  ax,  but  it  was  another  soul 
which  possessed  him  temporarily;  he  was  possessed  by  some 
spirit,  and  as  possessed  he  should  be  put  out  of  the  way.  The 
treatment  of  the  subject  in  the  Hebrew  codes  illustrates  the  dif- 
ficulty which  is  experienced  even  at  a  higher  stage  in  strictly 
distinguishing  between  the  two  spheres  of  design  and  accident. 
Each  code  assigns  a  city  of  refuge  for  the  excusable  homicide, 
but  none  make  it  perfectly  clear  whether  it  is  unintentional  or 
unpremeditated  man-slaying  that  is  in  view.  The  Book  of  the 
Covenant  simply  says,  "If  a  man  he  not  in  wait,  but  God  deHver 
him  (the  victim)  into  his  hand,  then  I  will  appoint  thee  a  place 
whither  he  shall  flee.  And  if  a  man  come  presumptuously  upon 
his  neighbor  to  slay  him  with  guile,  thou  shalt  take  him  from 
mine  altar  that  he  may  die."^  In  Deuteronomy  there  is  an  at- 
tempt to  define  accident.  The  city  of  refuge  is  appointed  for 
"whoso  killeth  his  neighbor  unawares  and  hated  him  not  in 
times  past."  The  first  qualification  would  be  true  of  uninten- 
tional, the  second  of  unpremeditated  homicide.  Then  follows 
a  somewhat  elaborate  illustration  of  a  case  of  pure  accident.^ 
"As  when  a  man  goeth  into  the  forest  with  his  neighbor  to  hew 
1  Exodus  xxi.  13,  14.  2  Dei  t.  xix.  4-6. 


LAW  AND  JUSTICE  353 

wood,  and  his  hand  fetcheth  a  stroke  with  the  ax  to  cut  down  the 
tree,  and  the  head  sUppeth  from  the  helve,  and  Hghteth  upon  his 
neighbor,  that  he  die,  he  shall  flee  unto  one  of  these  cities  and 
live :"  and  then  it  is  once  more  stated  that  the  slayer  ought  not 
to  die,  "  inasmuch  as  he  hated  him  not  in  time  past,"  which  would 
be  true  of  any  want  of  premeditation.  Furthermore,  even  in  this 
relatively  enlightened  code  the  unintentional  slayer  is  not  fully 
protected.  It  is  clearly  anticipated  that  the  "  avenger  of  blood  " 
will  pursue  him  "while  his  heart  is  hot,  and  overtake  him  because 
the  way  is  long,"  and  smite  him  mortally,  and  there  is  no  hint 
that  the  avenger  will  be  punished.  Nor  was  the  alternative, 
exile  to  the  city  of  refuge,  a  merely  nominal  penalty.  Finally, 
in  the  Priestly  Code  there  is  an  elaborate  attempt  to  distinguish 
different  cases.  The  cities  of  refuge  are  appointed  for  every  one 
that  "killeth  any  person  unwittingly,"  or,  as  the  margin  renders 
it,  "  through  error."  (An  attempt  is  made  to  render  the  meaning 
clearer  by  specifying  the  implements  used,  of  iron,  wood  or  stone.) 
On  the  other  hand,  he  who  has  killed  another,  "lying  in  wait"  or 
"  in  enmity,"  is  to  be  put  to  death  by  the  avenger  of  blood  "  when 
he  meeteth  him."  In  intermediate  cases  the  congregation  shall 
judge.  "But  if  he  thrust  him  suddenly  without  enmity,  or 
hurled  upon  him  anything  without  lying  in  wait,  or  with  any 
stone,  whereby  a  man  may  die,  seeing  him  not,  and  cast  it  upon 
him,  so  that  he  died,  and  he  was  not  his  enemy,  neither  sought 
his  harm  :  then  the  congregation  shall  judge  between  the  smiter 
and  the  avenger  of  blood  according  to  these  judgments."  ^  Even 
here,  then,  the  three  cases  of  accident  ("seeing  him  not"),  as- 
sault without  intent  to  kill  ("thrust  him  suddenly"),  and  unpre- 
meditated homicide  ("without  lying  in  wait")  seem  to  be  in  a 
measure  confused.  And  even  in  this  code  the  avenger  may  slay 
the  man-slayer  anywhere  outside  the  borders  of  the  city  of  refuge 
until  the  death  of  the  high  priest. 

Not  infrequently  in  early  law  we  find  the  distinction  that  un- 
intentional homicide  is  atonable  by  paying  the  wergild,  while 
deliberate  murder  gives  rise  to  the  blood  feud.     Thus  in  the  code 
1  Numbers  xxxv.  15,  20,  21,  22-24. 


354  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

of  Hammurabi  the  homicide  might  swear  that  the  blow  was  un- 
intentional and  escape  with  a  fine.  So,  again,  though  Germanic 
law  begins  by  holding  a  man  equally  imputable  for  all  that  he  has 
done,  it  is  an  ancient  mitigation  that  for  unintentional  homicide 
the  war  is  due,  and  the  blood  feud  should  not  be  waged.  The 
disentanglement  of  innocent  from  culpable  homicide  was  a  very 
gradual  achievement  in  medieval  Europe  though  aided  by  the 
Civil  and  Canon  Law,  and  the  forfeiture  of  goods  —  the  direct 
survival  of  the  wergild  —  remained  in  theory  in  English  law 
down  to  1828. 

It  is  a  natural,  though,  to  our  minds,  a  bizarre  consequence 
that  in  early  justice  animals  and  even  inanimate  objects  may  be 
regarded  as  appropriate  subjects  of  punishment.  The  slaying 
of  offending  animals  is  provided  for  in  the  Book  of  Exodus.  Many 
cruel  punishments  were  inflicted  upon  animals  in  the  code  of  the 
Zenda vesta, ^  and  the  same  thing  occurred  in  medieval  Europe, 
where,  perhaps  under  the  influence  of  the  Mosaic  legislation,  it 
even  survived  in  isolated  cases  to  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. The  punishment  of  animals  and  inanimate  objects  was  no 
mere  wreaking  of  blind  fury  on  innocent  creatures.  Probably  to 
the  primitive  mind  the  ox  that  gored  a  man,  the  sword  that  slew, 
and  the  murderer  that  wielded  it,  were  much  more  on  one  level 
than  they  can  be  to  us.  The  animal  or  tool,  if  not  conscious  them- 
selves, might  be  endued  with  a  magic  power  or  possessed  with  an 
evil  spirit.  It  was  well  to  get  rid  of  them  before  they  did  more 
harm.  If  not  destroyed  they  might  be  purified.  Thus  in  the 
English  law  of  Deodand,  which  was  not  abolished  till  the  middle 
of  the  last  century,  there  is  a  survival  of  the  view  that  anything 
that  has  killed  a  man  must  undergo  a  kind  of  religious  purifica- 
tion ;  a  cart,  for  instance,  which  ran  over  a  man,  or  a  tree  which 
fell  on  him,  was  confiscated  and  sold  for  charity  —  at  bottom 
merely  a  somewhat  humanized  version  of  the  ancient  Athenian 
process  whereby  the  ax  that  had  slain  a  man  was  brought  to 
trial,  and,  if  found  guilty,  solemnly  thrown  over  the  boundary. 
It  need  hardly  be  added  that  where  responsibility  is  extended  to 
1  The  sacred  writings  of  the  Zoroastrian  religion.  —  Editors. 


LAW  AND  JUSTICE  355 

animals  and  inanimate  objects,  it  is  apt  to  be  inadequately 
defined  in  the  case  of  idiots,  lunatics,  and  minors. 

The  principle  of  collective  responsibility  does  not  necessarily 
disappear  with  the  rise  of  public  justice  under  central  authority. 
It  lingers  on,  partly  through  sheer  conservatism,  but  also  in  many 
cases  for  political  reasons,  to  a  late  date.  Thus  it  is  particularly 
common  to  find  that  in  political  offenses  the  family  of  the  offender 
suffers  with  him.  The  principle  of  collective  responsibility  has 
always  been  maintained  in  the  Far  East,  in  China,  in  the  Korea, 
and,  under  the  influence  of  Chinese  civilization,  in  Japan,  while 
it  is  noteworthy  that  for  political  offenses  the  parents  and  chil- 
dren might  be  punished  under  French  law  right  down  to  the  time 
of  the  Revolution.  Parallels  could  be  found  in  the  laws  of  the 
ancient  East,  of  ancient  Persia,  and  of  many  states  of  medieval 
Europe.  It  is,  in  fact,  only  the  decay  of  the  joint  family  system 
and  the  rise  of  the  free  individual  as  the  basis  of  the  modern 
state  which  definitely  does  away  with  this  principle,  so  funda^ 
mentally  irreconcilable  with  the  strictly  ethical  notion  of  justice. 
An  interesting  transitional  phase  is  to  be  found  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, where  the  visiting  of  the  sins  of  the  fathers  upon  the  chil- 
dren is  very  definitely  laid  down  as  a  piece  of  Divine  justice  in 
the  earlier  legislation  (I  mean  in  the  Second  Commandment), 
whereas  in  the  time  of  Ezekiel  it  was  strongly  maintained  to  be 
an  injustice  that  when  the  fathers  had  eaten  sour  grapes  the  chil- 
dren's teeth  should  be  set  on  edge.  It  was,  in  fact,  part  of  the 
ethical  revolution  introduced  by  the  later  prophets  to  establish 
morally  for  the  Jewish  code  the  principle  of  individual  responsi- 
bihty.i 

7.  With  the  evolution  of  social  order,  and  in  particular  with 
the  growth  of  central  authority,  the  redress  of  wrongs  begins  to 
take  the  form  of  an  independent  and  impartial  administration  of 
justice.     Let  us  trace  this  growth  in  outline  from  its  beginnings. 

1  Ezek.  xviii.  2;  Jer.  xxxi.  29.  The  result  is  embodied  in  Deut.  xxiv.  16. 
"The  fathers  shall  not  be  put  to  death  for  the  children,  neither  shall  the 
children  be  put  to  death  for  the  fathers ;  every  man  shall  be  put  to  death  for 
his  own  sin." 


356      LEONARD  TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

The  blood  feud  proper  is  revenge  guided  and  limited  by  cus- 
tom. It  is  not  justice.  It  is  waged  by  two  conflicting  parties, 
and  there  is  no  impartial  third  party  to  judge  between  them. 
But  even  in  barbaric  society  the  blood  feud  does  not  rage  wholly 
without  check.  The  public  opinion  of  the  group  is  always  a  force 
to  be  reckoned  with.  Every  man's  rights  and  obligations  are 
fixed  by  custom.  The  very  vengeance  taken  on  those  who  in- 
fringe them  is  a  custom,  and  directed  in  all  its  details  by  tradi- 
tion. The  headman  or  the  elders  of  the  clan  or  village  are  pre- 
pared to  listen  to  complaints,  to  decide  whether  a  wrong  has 
been  done,  and,  if  so,  what  the  reparation  ought  to  be.  The  in- 
jured party  may  appeal  to  them  if  he  pleases,  and  it  may  be  that 
the  aggressor  will  abide  by  their  decision.  If  so,  the  affair  is 
arranged  perhaps  by  composition,  perhaps  by  a  stated  penalty. 
Otherwise  the  parties  will  fight  it  out  or  it  will  come  to  a  feud. 
In  short,  there  is  an  effort  on  the  part  of  the  leading  men  to  keep 
the  peace  and  adjust  the  quarrel.  Sometimes  they  will  inter- 
vene of  themselves  if  a  feud  becomes  serious  and  threatens  the 
general  peace. 

The  "court,"  if  so  it  may  be  called,  appears  at  this  stage  rather 
as  peacemaker  than  judge.  The  disputants  may  ignore  it,  pre- 
ferring to  trust  to  their  own  strength  and  that  of  their  friends. 
Yet  it  is  from  the  first  the  avenger's  interest  to  have  public 
opinion  with  him.  He  relies  on  the  countenance  and  practical 
help  of  his  kindred  and  fellow-tribesmen.  At  least  he  must  avert 
their  opposition.  If  the  facts  are  pecuUarly  flagrant  the  neighbors 
will  be  with  him  and  he  will  have  the  less  difficulty  in  executing 
vengeance.  Perhaps  even  the  kindred  of  the  wrongdoer  will 
refuse  to  stand  by  him.  Thus  it  becomes  the  interest  of  the 
avenger  to  make  his  case  plain  to  the  neighbors,  and  they  in 
turn  wish  to  hear  what  the  accused  party  has  to  say.  A  palaver 
is  held.  The  avenger  comes  with  his  kinsmen  and  friends.  They 
state  their  case  and  announce  their  intention  of  seeking  revenge. 
The  accused  is  also  present,  backed  by  his  kin,  and  repels  the 
demands  made  on  him.  It  may  be  that  the  matter  is  settled 
between  the  groups  concerned.     It  may  be  that  the  neighbors 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  357 

or  the  chief  give  sentence,  but  even  so  it  does  not  follow  that 
they  enforce  it.  They  may  give  the  appellant  their  moral  sup- 
port, and  leave  it  to  him  to  obtain  satisfaction  as  best  he  can. 
But  of  course  their  decision  helps  him  to  get  the  opinion  of  the 
tribe  on  his  side,  and  their  moral  force  will  be  translatable  into 
physical  force.  It  will  mean  so  many  more  backers  for  him,  and 
so  many  less  for  his  opponents.  This  support  may  be  disdained 
by  the  strong,  but  it  will  be  valued  by  the  weak,  and  will  be  up- 
held by  those  who  desire  internal  peace.  Thus  even  under  the 
clan  and  tribal  organization  of  society  some  form  of  public  in- 
tervention may  arise  alongside  of  private  redress.  Feuds  are 
averted  by  the  adjustment  of  disputes,  or,  if  a  wrong  has  been 
done,  by  getting  the  complainant  to  accept  composition,  and 
the  aggressor  to  undergo  some  penalty  which  will  be  a  mitigated 
form  of  revenge,  or  by  bringing  the  two  parties  to  fight  it  out 
under  the  regular  forms  of  a  duel. 

Such  methods  of  mitigating  the  blood  feud  are  stimulated  by 
the  growth  of  the  kingly  power  — •  that  is  to  say,  of  an  organized 
force  outside  the  contending  families  or  clans,  which  can  sum- 
mon them  before  its  bar,  decide  their  cause,  and  require  them  to 
keep  the  peace.  The  king,  whose  duty  and  interest  it  is  to  main- 
tain public  order,  treats  crime  —  or  certain  kinds  of  crime  —  no 
longer  as  an  offense  against  the  individual  whom  it  primarily 
affects,  but  as  a  menace  to  public  tranquiUity,  a  breach  of  his 
"peace."  This,  if  he  is  strong  enough,  he  will  punish  directly; 
if  not  sufficiently  strong,  he  will  deprive  the  offender  of  his  pro- 
tection, put  him  outside  the  king's  peace,  and  compel  him  by  fine 
to  buy  back  what  he  has  lost.  Thus  we  find  crime  punishable 
by  wite  as  well  as  by  bot  —  a  fine  to  the  king  side  by  side  with 
compensation  to  the  kinsfolk. 

But  from  moral  assistance  the  transition  to  physical  assistance 
is  not  very  difficult  in  idea,  however  slow  and  cumbrous  it  may 
have  been  in  practice.  There  is  more  than  one  method  of  transi- 
tion. Sometimes  we  find  the  public  authority,  the  elders  or  the 
whole  body  of  the  neighbors,  or  later  the  regular  magistrate, 
exerting  themselves  to  arrest  the  offender  and  handing  him  over 


358  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

to  the  avenger  of  blood  for  execution,  or  judging  between 
the  avenger  of  blood  and  the  man-slayer,  whose  act  was 
" unwitting. "  Thus  in  Deuteronomy,  if  the  dehberate  murderer 
flies  to  a  city  of  refuge,  "  then  the  elders  of  his  city  shall  send  and 
fetch  him  thence,  and  deliver  him  into  the  hand  of  the  avenger  of 
blood  that  he  may  die."  ^  But  without  taking  an  active  part 
in  the  pursuit  and  capture  of  the  offender  the  court  had  an  effec- 
tive weapon  in  the  power  of  outlawry.  Since  in  accordance  with 
early  ideas  all  personal  rights  depend  upon  membership  of  a 
society  united  for  mutual  protection,  it  follows  that  the  man  ex- 
cluded from  the  group  is  in  the  position  of  a  stranger  and  an 
enemy ;  he  is  a  wolf's  head,  a  wild  animal  whom  the  first  comer 
may  put  to  death  at  sight,  with  whom  nobody  may  associate,  to 
whom  nobody  may  give  food  or  lodging.  Outlawry  can  therefore 
be  applied  either  as  a  punishment  or  as  a  process  —  as  a  method  of 
bringing  the  accused  into  court.  What  more  reasonable  than  that 
if  he  will  not  submit  to  law  he  shall  lose  the  protection  of  the  law  ? 
With  this  weapon,  potent  in  proportion  as  the  social  order  is  de- 
veloped, the  court  of  early  law  consolidates  its  authority,  and 
from  being  a  casual  institution  of  voluntary  resort  for  those  who 
wish  the  sympathy  of  their  neighbors  in  avenging  their  wrongs, 
becomes  an  established  authority  with  compulsory  powers  before 
which  either  party  can  be  summoned  to  appear  at  the  instance  of 
his  opponent. 

8.  But  we  are  still  a  long  way  from  a  modern  Court  of  Justice. 
The  primary  function  of  a  court  thus  established  is  not  so  much 
to  discover  the  merits  of  the  case  and  make  an  equitable  award,  as 
to  keep  the  peace  and  prevent  the  extension  of  wild  and  irregular 
blood  feuds.  What  the  court  has  to  deal  with  is  the  fact  that  a 
feud  exists.  A  comes  before  it  with  a  complaint  against  B  of 
having  killed  his  kinsman,  or  stolen  his  cattle,  or  carried  off  his 
daughter.  Here  is  a  feud  which,  in  the  absence  of  a  court,  A 
will  prosecute  with  his  own  right  arm  and  that  of  his  kinsmen  if 
he  can  get  them  to  help  him.  B,  again,  will  resist  with  the  help 
of  his  kinsmen,  and  so  there  will  be  a  vendetta.     The  court, 

^  Deut.  xix.  12. 


LAW   AND   JUSTICE  355 

whose  primary  object  is  to  secure  a  settlement,  does  not  go  into 
nice  questions  as  to  the  precise  merits  and  demerits  of  A  and  B, 
but  it  can  prescribe  certain  tests  whereby  the  appellant  or  the 
defendant  may  establish  his  case.  It  sets  the  litigant  "a  task 
that  he  must  attempt.  If  he  performs  it,  he  has  won  his  cause." 
The  performance  of  this  task  is  not,  to  our  minds,  proof  of  the 
justice  of  his  cause.  It  is  rather  the  compliance  with  a  legal  and 
orderly  method  of  establishing  a  case,  but  at  the  stage  we  are 
considering  it  was  probably  regarded  as  satisfying  justice,  at 
least,  as  far  as  justice  claimed  to  be  satisfied. 

What  task,  then,  would  the  court  award  ?  It  might  be  that 
the  litigant  should  maintain  his  cause  with  his  body.  The  par- 
ties would  then  have  to  fight  it  out  in  person  or  by  their  cham- 
pions. Here  we  have  the  method  of  the  blood  feud,  but  regu- 
larized, limited,  and  transformed  into  the  judicial  duel.  Again, 
the  court  might  put  one  or  both  parties  to  the  oath.  But  this  is 
not  the  oath  of  the  modern  law  court  —  that  is  to  say,  it  is  not 
a  solemn  asseveration  of  the  truth  of  certain  evidence  of  fact, 
but  an  assertion  of  the  general  justice  of  the  claim  alleged,  or  of 
its  injustice,  as  the  case  may  be.  And  as  the  feud  will  not  be 
waged  by  the  individual  claimant  alone,  but  with  the  aid  of  all 
his  kindred,  so  the  court  will  expect  the  kindred  to  come  and  take 
the  oath  along  with  him.  Hence  the  institution  of  oath-helpers, 
the  comourgators,  who  are  in  point  of  fact  the  fellow-clansmen  all 
bound  to  the  duty  at  this  stage  of  swearing  their  friend  out  of  the 
difficulty,  just  as  before  they  were  bound  to  help  him  out  of  it  by 
arms.  The  compurgators  are  simply  clansmen  fighting  with 
spiritual  weapons  instead  of  carnal  ones.  Success  in  the  cause 
will  depend  not  on  the  opinion  formed  by  the  court  as  to  the 
veracity  of  one  side  or  the  perjury  of  the  other,  but  on  the  ability 
of  the  parties  to  get  the  full  number  of  compurgators  required,  on 
formal  correctness  in  taking  the  oath,  and  if  both  parties  fulfill 
all  conditions  and  no  further  means  are  available  for  deciding 
between  them,  on  certain  rules  as  to  the  burden  of  proof. 

The  provision  of  such  further  means  of  deciding  between  the 
parties  is  logically  the  next  step.     So  far,  the  judicial  process  has 


360  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

appeared  merely  as  a  regularization  of  the  blood  feud,  but  both 
the  oath  and  the  judicial  combat  point  the  way  to  a  higher  ideal. 
The  court  itself  is  not  in  a  position  to  try  the  merits  of  the  case 
unless  it  be  some  very  simple  matter  of  the  criminal  caught  red- 
handed,  but  it  may  refer  the  decision  to  the  unseen  powers^ 
to  the  gods,  or  to  the  magical  qualities  inherent  in  certain  things. 
Thus  the  judicial  duel,  instead  of  being  a  mere  carnal  fight  regu- 
larized and  limited  by  certain  rules,  may  be  conceived  rather  as 
an  appeal  to  the  judgment  of  God,  and  the  victory  as  His  sen- 
tence which  the  court  hesitates  to  pronounce  on  the  basis  of  its 
merely  human  wisdom.  Similarly  the  oath  —  though  less  than 
evidence  as  we  conceive  evidence  —  is  also  more,  for  it  is  an 
appeal  to  powers  in  which  primitive  man  implicitly  believes,  to 
take  vengeance  on  him  who  swears,  if  his  cause  be  not  just. 
Hence  the  form  of  the  oath  is  everything,  for  the  unknown 
powers  are  great  sticklers  for  form.  The  oath-taker  calls  down 
their  punishment  on  himself  and  his  family  by  a  set  formula 
which  they  will  rigidly  obey.  If  in  the  formula  he  can  leave 
himself  any  loophole  of  escape  the  oath  is  void;  it  is  no  true 
summoning  of  the  vengeful  powers,  and  the  court  will  disregard 
it,  but  if  it  is  complete  and  sound  in  point  of  form,  then  there  is  no 
escape.  One  of  two  things  must  happen :  either  the  oath  was  true 
or  the  curse  will  fall,  and  thus  perjury  brings  its  own  punishment. 

Hence  it  is  that  for  any  given  charge  the  law  may  call  upon  a 
man  to  purge  himself  by  oath,  or  perhaps  to  purge  himself  along 
with  a  specified  number  of  oath-helpers  who  will  suffer  with  him 
if  the  oath  is  false,  and  the  oath-helpers  required  may  be  increased 
according  to  the  seriousness  of  the  crime.  If  the  oath  fails,  the 
prescribed  punishment  follows.  If  it  is  duly  taken,  then  either 
the  accused  was  innocent,  or  he  has  inflicted  the  punishment 
entailed  by  the  broken  oath  on  himself  and  his  oath-helpers. 

But  the  consequences  of  a  false  oath  were  not  immediately 
apparent.  If  the  court  wished  to  have  the  judgment  of  the 
Unseen  Powers  before  it  some  more  summary  process  was  neces- 
sary. This  was  found  in  the  ordeal,  a  test  to  which  both  parties 
could  be  submitted  if  necessary,  and  of  which  the  results  were 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  361 

Immediate  and  manifest.  Probably  no  institution  is  more  uni- 
versal at  a  certain  stage  of  civilization  than  that  of  testing  the 
truth  or  falsity  of  a  case  by  a  certain  magico-religious  process  — 
the  eating  of  a  piece  of  bread,  the  handling  of  burning  iron,  or 
boiling  oil,  jumping  into  water,  walking  through  fire,  exposure  to 
wild  beasts,  and  so  forth.  The  details  vary,  though  even  in 
detail  resemblances  crop  up  at  the  most  remote  periods  and  in  the 
most  remote  places,  but  the  general  principle  is  still  more  clearly 
constant  through  the  ages  and  the  climes.  Truth  cannot  at  this 
stage  be  tested  by  human  evidence.  At  most,  the  criminal  caught 
red-handed  may  be  summarily  dispatched  upon  the  evidence  of 
eye-witnesses  given  there  and  then,  but  the  complicated  civil 
or  criminal  processes  of  the  civilized  world  imply  an  intellectual 
as  well  as  a  moral  development  which  makes  them  impossible 
at  an  early  stage.  It  is  the  gods  who  judge ;  the  man  who  can 
handle  hot  iron  is  proved  by  heaven  to  be  innocent ;  the  woman 
whom  the  holy  river  rejects  is  a  witch ;  he  whom  the  bread 
chokes  is  a  perjurer.  Nor  are  these  tests  wholly  devoid  of  ra- 
tional basis ;  it  is  not  so  difficult  to  understand  that  the  guilty 
man  would  be  more  liable  to  choke  than  the  innocent,  not  be- 
cause bread  is  holy,  but  because  his  nerves  are  shaken.  It  is 
quite  intelligible  that  in  a  credulous  age  the  false  oath  would 
bring  its  curse  in  the  form  of  a  will  paralyzed  by  terror,  just  as  we 
know  that  amongst  many  savages  witchcraft  really  kills  through 
the  sufferer's  intense  fear  of  it.  Lastly,  if  the  criminal  may  be 
ready  to  take  his  chances  of  the  curse  in  preference  to  the  cer- 
tainties of  the  scaffold,  he  may  find  it  difficult  to  get  compurga- 
tors to  stand  by  him,  and  in  the  face  of  their  plain  knowledge  in- 
volve themselves  in  the  same  risk. 

9.  Thus,  particularly  in  the  institution  of  compurgation,  we 
find  the  beginnings  of  a  new  conception,  the  conception  that  it  is 
the  duty  of  the  court  to  try  the  case,  to  obtain  proof  of  facts, 
to  give  its  own  verdict  based  on  its  own  judgment,  and  execute 
its  own  sentence  by  its  own  ofiicers.  The  steps  by  which  this 
change  is  achieved  belong  rather  to  the  history  of  jurisprudence 
than  to  that  of  comparative  ethics.     Only  certain  broad  fea- 


362  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

tures  of  the  new  phase  concern  us.  Its  primary  condition  is  per- 
haps not  so  much  a  new  growth  of  moral  ideas  as  the  formation  of 
an  effective  organ  of  government.  The  elders  or  the  petty  chief 
of  the  village  community  hesitate  to  carry  out  a  death  sentence 
or  inflict  corporal  punishment  for  fear  of  involving  themselves 
in  the  blood  feud.  There  must  be  an  executive  power  with  suffi- 
cient force  behind  it  to  raise  its  officers  above  the  fear  of  revenge 
before  a  public  system  of  justice,  in  the  full  sense,  can  arise. 
Hence  the  decay  of  blood  revenge  and  the  rise  of  public  justice 
are  frequently  associated  with  the  growth  of  kingly  power. 
For  example,  in  Europe  in  the  early  Middle  Ages  we  have  seen 
that  certain  offenses  were  treated  as  breaches  of  the  king's  peace. 
This  peace  was  a  protection  afforded  in  the  first  instance  to  cer- 
tain places  and  times,  but  it  was  gradually  extended,  largely  it 
would  seem  through  the  king's  protection  of  the  roads  —  "the 
king's  highway"  —  to  all  places  and  all  times.  Thus  the  act 
which  had  been  a  breach  of  the  king's  peace,  punished  by  the  with- 
drawal of  his  protection  only  when  committed  at  certain  times 
and  places,  now  became  an  offense  against  him  at  all  times  and 
places.  Its  punishment  was  still  outlawry.  But  as  outlawry 
deprived  a  man  of  all  rights,  it  enabled  the  king  to  inflict  what 
penalty  he  chose.  The  criminal,  in  fact,  was  at  his  mercy ;  any 
penalty  short  of  death  with  forfeiture  of  all  goods  would  be  an 
indulgence,  and  hence  the  royal  courts  could  fix  a  scale  of 
punishments  at  their  pleasure. 

With  the  growth  of  public  justice  the  function  of  the  courts 
is  changed :  they  have  no  longer  to  supervise  the  feuds  of  hostile 
families,  but  to  maintain  public  order,  to  detect  and  punish 
crime,  and  to  uphold  innocent  people  in  their  rights.  This 
involves  numerous  changes.  In  the  first  place,  self-help,  the 
obtaining  of  satisfaction  by  the  strong  hand,  is  no  longer  neces- 
sary. The  injured  man  can  get  a  remedy  from  the  court,  and 
vengeance  is  forbidden.  The  victory  is  not  immediate,  and  often 
the  state  has  to  come  to  some  compromise  with  the  old  system. 
For  example,  vengeance  may  be  allowed  in  flagrante  delicto,'^  or 
^  At  the  moment  of  the  crime.  —  Editors 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  363 

within  a  certain  period  after  the  offense.     Where  state  justice  is 
very  weak,  an  asylum  may  be  granted  within  which  revenge  must 
not  be  executed ;  in  other  cases  where  the  process  is  further  ad- 
vanced and  justice  is  getting  the  upper  hand,  revenge  is  allowed 
only  with  the  consent  of  a  court.     Or  lastly,  excluded  from  all 
ordinary  cases,  revenge  is  tolerated  as  a  concession  to  human 
weakness  in  cases  where  strong  passions  are  excited  —  for  example, 
in  breaches  of  the  marriage  law  to  this  day  in  many  civilized  coun- 
tries.    The  transition  was  the  harder  because  it  involved  a  funda- 
mental ethical  change.     From  its  beginning,  as  we  have  seen, 
social  order  rested  on  the  readiness  of  every  man  to  stand  by  his 
kinsmen  in  their  quarrels.     Hence  the  duty  of  avenging  the 
injured  kinsman,  and  therefore  of  loving  one's  neighbor  in  this 
sense  and  hating  one's  enemy,  was  the  most  sacred  of  primitive 
principles,  bound  up  with  everything  that  made  a  common  life 
possible.     Public  justice  bade  men  lay  aside  this  principle,  and 
its  triumph  constitutes  one  of  the  greatest  of  social  revolutions. 
But  if  the  kindred  be  no  longer  allowed  to  avenge  themselves, 
the  corresponding  right  of  the  offender  to  make  peace  with  the 
kin  is  also  withdrawn.    A  crime  is  now  a  public  affair,  and  in  vary- 
ing degrees  according  to  time  and  country  the  public  authority 
takes  upon  itself  the  function  of  maintaining  order  and  of  dis- 
covering as  well  as  punishing  offenders.     The  trial  ceases  to  be 
a  milder  form  of  the  blood  feud.     The  complainant  no  longer 
exposes  himself  to  equal  punishment  by  way  of  retaliation  in  case 
he  loses  his  suit.     What  was  previously  accusation  now  becomes 
denunciation.     Again,  though  the  injured  party  may  set  the 
whole  process  in  motion,  the  result  will  differ  vitally  according 
to  the  nature  of  the  act  of  which  he  complains.     Justice,  having 
public  interests  in  view,  will  count  not  only  the  magnitude  of  the 
injury  suffered,  but  the  degree  of  culpability  in  the  man  who 
inflicted  it.     Vengeance,  the  object  of  the  older  process,  breaks 
up  into  the  two  distinct  ideas  of  punishment  inflicted  by  the  judge, 
and  restitution  assigned  to  the  complainant.     Civil  and  criminal 
justice  are  distinct. 

10.   Once  become  serious  in  its  determination  to  investigate 


364      LEONARD  TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

the  case  before  giving  sentence,  public  justice  could  not  long  be 
satisfied  with  the  older  supernatural  machinery.  In  medieval 
Europe  it  was  early  a  matter  of  remark  that  the  battle  was  not 
always  to  the  just.  "We  are,"  says  the  Lombard  king,  Luit- 
prand,  "uncertain  about  the  judgment  of  God,  and  have  heard 
that  many  through  the  battle  lose  their  cause  without  justice ; 
but  the  law  itself,  on  account  of  the  custom  of  our  race  of  Lom- 
bards, we  cannot  forbid." 

It  was  therefore  a  great  step  in  advance  when  ordeals,  which 
had  been  adopted  by  the  church  after  the  barbarian  invasions, 
were  condemned  by  the  Lateran  Council  of  1215.  As  a  conse- 
quence they  disappear  in  England  after  the  reign  of  John,  while 
the  oath  of  compurgators  is  gradually  converted  into  evidence  to 
character.  The  ordeal  by  battle  remained,  but  an  alternative 
was  offered  in  the  form  of  a  judicial  inquiry  with  witnesses  and 
evidence.  The  accused  might,  in  English  phrase,  "put  himself 
upon  his  country,"  i.e.,  let  his  case  go  before  a  jury,  men  of  his 
neighborhood  knowing  the  facts  and  prepared  to  testify  to  them, 
or  in  French  phrase  the  accused  could  be  offered  the  "enqueste 
du  pais."  ^  And  this  alternative,  if  at  first  optional,  soon  mani- 
fested its  vast  superiority,  and  the  settlement  of  all  disputes  and 
all  accusations  by  an  impartial  tribunal,  which  has  heard  what 
both  sides  have  to  say,  becomes  an  integral  part  of  the  civilized 
order.  But  even-handed  justice  is  not  reached  at  one  stride. 
The  public  authorities  having  once  taken  up  the  function  of  re- 
pressing crime  are  more  bent  on  efficiency  in  the  maintenance 
of  order  than  on  nice  considerations  of  justice  to  individuals. 
Their  tendency  is  to  treat  the  accused  man  as  guilty,  and  means 
of  proving  his  innocence  are  somewhat  grudgingly  meted  out  to 
him  as  privileges  rather  than  as  rights,  while  deficiencies  of  evi- 
dence are  boldly  supplemented  by  the  use  of  torture.  In  Eng- 
lish law,  indeed,  torture  (except  in  the  case  of  the  peine  forte  et 
dure)  2  never  seems  to  have  been  fully  recognized  ;  if  used  by  the 
absolute  monarchy  it  was  as  a  political  instrument  rather  than 

1  State  inquirj'.  — Editors. 

2  Torture  applied  to  a  prisoner  to  compel  him  to  plead.  —  Editors. 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  365 

as  part  of  the  ordinary  machinery  of  law.  On  the  Continent,  on 
the  other  hand,  owing  partly  perhaps  to  a  stricter  theory  of  the 
amount  of  evidence  necessary  for  proof,  partly  to  the  fact  that 
the  authorities  were  more  determined  to  suppress  crime  than  to 
protect  individuals  from  the  possibility  of  undeserved  suffering, 
torture  became  a  recognized  method  of  supplementing  defective 
evidence.  The  judicial  conscience  was  easier  if  it  extorted  a  con- 
fession from  a  man  before  condemning  him  than  if  it  acted  solely 
on  evidence  undistorted  by  physical  suffering.  Even  where  tor- 
ture was  not  allowed  the  accused  was  not  always  put  on  a  level 
with  the  prosecution  as  to  the  right  of  giving  evidence,  calling 
witnesses  and  employing  counsel.  It  is  not  until  all  these  condi- 
tions are  fulfilled  that  a  court  of  justice  can  be  said  to  come  up 
to  the  ideal  of  a  place  in  which  the  full  merits  of  the  case  are 
investigated  before  a  verdict  is  given.  Even  now  it  must  be 
remarked  that  an  English  trial  preserves  much  of  the  form  of  the 
old  judicial  combat.  Its  method  of  obtaining  a  verdict  is  still 
that  of  pitting  attack  and  defense  against  one  another.  It  may 
be  that  this  is  the  best  method  of  obtaining  truth  where  human 
interests  and  passions  are  at  stake,  and  that  the  advocate  must 
always  retain  a  place  beside  the  judge :  but  what  seems  clear  is 
that  the  power  of  the  purse  in  retaining  the  best  legal  skill  is  a 
make-weight,  especially  in  civil  cases,  of  no  slight  practical 
importance ;  and  it  is  possible  that  our  descendants  will  look 
back  upon  a  system  which  allowed  wealth  to  count  for  so  much 
before  what  should  be  an  absolutely  impartial  tribunal,  as  not 
differing  so  much  as  we  should  like  to  think  from  the  old  ordeal 
by  battle.  The  fight  with  the  purse  is  not  the  ideal  substitute 
for  the  fight  with  the  person. 

II.  We  have  seen  that  public  justice  often  led  to  severity  in 
the  process  of  obtaining  truth ;  still  more  was  this  the  case  in  the 
punishment  of  crime.  Accompanying  the  growth  of  order  in  a 
barbarian  society  there  is,  as  has  been  remarked  above,  a  tend- 
ency to  substitute  a  system  of  composition  for  blood  vengeance 
by  a  money  payment.  This  system  made  for  social  peace,  but, 
particularly  with  the  increase  of  wealth  and  difference  of  rank,  it 


366      LEONARD  TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

lent  itself  to  frightful  abuses.  Crimes,  punished  perhaps  too 
fiercely  in  early  society,  became  for  the  well-to-do  too  lightly  and 
easily  atonable,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  at  the  next  stage  of 
social  development,  in  which  the  central  power  has  consolidated 
itself  and  the  executive  has  become  strong  enough  to  dismiss  any 
fear  of  the  blood  feud,  a  period  of  severer  punishment  should 
set  in.  Crime  now  becomes  a  revolt  against  authority,  a  chal- 
lenge to  the  powers  that  be,  civil  and  perhaps  ecclesiastical  as 
well,  to  put  forth  all  their  strength  to  subdue  it.  Moreover,  the 
central  authority  at  its  best  acts  in  the  interests  of  public  order, 
and  on  the  whole  represents  the  principle  of  impartial  judgment 
as  between  disputants,  and  of  progress  towards  internal  peace 
and  the  reign  of  law.  On  the  other  hand,  order  is  still  difficult 
to  maintain  and  powerful  families  are  recalcitrant.  From  such 
causes  as  these  acting  in  combination  the  criminal  law  now 
reaches  the  acme  of  its  rigor.  Death  penalties  or  savage  mutila- 
tions are  inflicted  for  offenses  of  the  second  and  third  order,  tor- 
ture is  freely  used  to  extort  confession,  and  the  brutahty  of  the 
mob  is  called  in  to  supplement  that  of  the  executioner. 

As  to  the  severity,  or  rather  barbarity,  of  the  criminal  law  in 
Europe  down  to  the  nineteenth  century  little  need  be  said,  as  the 
broad  facts  are  well  known.  In  England  death  was  theoretically 
the  penalty  for  all  felonies  except  petty  larceny  and  mayhem, 
from  the  Middle  Ages  down  to  1826.  This  rule  was  subject  to 
the  exceptions  based  on  "benefit  of  clergy,"  which  originally 
meant  the  right  of  a  clerk  to  be  tried  in  the  ecclesiastical  courts ; 
then,  being  extended  to  all  who  could  read,  became  something  of 
the  nature  of  a  class  privilege,  and  finally  in  1705,  the  necessity 
for  reading  being  abolished,  was  converted  into  a  means  of  grace. 
The  punishment  for  a  "clergyable"  offense  was  to  be  branded  in 
the  hand  and  imprisoned  for  not  more  than  one  year,  except  in 
the  case  of  larceny,  which  by  the  law  of  17 17  was  punishable  by 
transportation  for  seven  years.  From  the  fifteenth  century 
onwards  a  succession  of  statutes  excluded  more  and  more  offenses 
from  benefit  of  clergy,  and  thus  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  such  oft'enses  as  arson,  burglary,  horse  stealing,  stealing 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  367 

from  the  person  above  the  value  of  a  shiUing,  rape  and  abduction 
with  intent  to  marry,  were  all  capital  "whether  the  offender 
could  read  or  not."  In  the  eighteenth  century  the  list  was 
lengthened,  but  transportation  was  often  substituted  for  the 
death  penalty.  Women  were  still  burnt  alive  for  the  murder 
of  a  husband  or  master,  or  for  coining.  Both  men  and  women 
were  whipped,  the  men  publicly  through  the  streets,  the  women 
as  a  rule  privately,  for  petty  thefts.  The  pillory  was  still  in  use 
for  perjury  and  other  offenses.  Meanwhile  the  state  of  the 
prisons,  where  innocent  and  guilty,  debtors  (often  with  their 
families)  and  convicted  criminals  were  all  huddled  together  with- 
out discrimination,  was,  when  Howard  began  his  work,  a  scandal 
of  the  first  magnitude.  Gaol  fever  raged,  prisons  were  still 
private  property,  and  the  prisoner,  innocent  or  guilty,  had  to 
fee  his  gaoler  and  pay  for  every  comfort  and  even  for  necessaries. 
In  the  Bishop  of  Ely's  prison  the  gaoler  prevented  escapes  by 
chaining  his  prisoners  on  their  backs  on  the  floor,  and  fastening 
a  spiked  iron  collar  about  their  necks.  "Even  when  recon- 
structed it  had  no  free  ward,  no  infirmary  and  no  straw;  and 
debtors  and  felons  were  confined  together." 

12.  But  even  before  Howard's  time  a  new  order  of  ideas  was 
slowly  emerging.  As  society  becomes  more  confident  in  its 
power  to  maintain  order,  the  cruelty  and  callousness  that  are 
born  of  fear  are  seen  in  a  new  light.  More  humane  influences 
make  themselves  felt,  and  from  that  moment  excessive  severity 
begins  to  militate  against  the  proper  execution  of  the  law,  es- 
pecially under  a  jury  system  like  ours.  With  the  advance  of 
civil  and  rehgious  liberty,  political  or  ecclesiastical  offenses  grow 
rare,  and  a  breach  of  the  law  becomes  more  and  more  synony- 
mous with  a  grave  moral  off  ense  against  society .  The  whole  prob- 
lem of  criminal  justice  is  thus  transferred  to  the  ethical  plane,  but 
the  change  raises  problems  which  a  century  has  been  too  short  a 
time  to  solve.  The  general  right  to  punish  may  be  derived  from 
the  right  of  society  to  protect  itself.    This  principle  taken  by  itself  ^ 

1  So  taken  it  is  a  one-sided  account.  Punishment,  like  other  actions,  can 
only  be  justified  as  doing  the  maximum  of  good  and  the  minimum  of  evil 


368      LEONARD  TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

might  be  held  to  justify  the  barbarities  of  the  old  law,  had 
not  experience  shown  that  extreme  severity  was  not  in  real- 
ity an  effective  instrument  of  discipline,  while  it  undoubtedly 
tended  to  harden  manners  and  accustom  people  to  witness  suffer- 
ing with  indifference.  Its  dealings  with  the  criminal  mark,  one 
may  say,  the  zero  point  in  the  scale  of  treatment  which  society 
conceives  to  be  the  due  of  its  various  members.  If  we  raise  this 
point  we  raise  the  standard  all  along  the  scale.  The  pauper 
may  justly  expect  something  better  than  the  criminal,  the  self- 
supporting  poor  man  or  woman  than  the  pauper.  Thus  if  it  is 
the  aim  of  good  civilization  to  raise  the  general  standard  of  life, 
this  is  a  tendency  which  a  savage  criminal  law  will  hinder  and  a 
humane  one  assist.  Moreover,  the  old  rigor,  so  far  as  it  rested 
on  reason  at  all,  was  based  on  a  very  crude  psychology.  People 
are  not  deterred  from  murder  by  the  sight  of  the  murderer  dan- 
gling from  a  gibbet.  On  the  contrary,  what  there  is  in  them  of  lust 
for  blood  is  tickled  and  excited,  their  sensuality  or  ferocity  is 
aroused,  and  the  counteracting  impulses,  the  aversion  to  blood- 
shed, the  compunction  for  suffering,  are  arrested.  Fear,  on 
which  the  principle  of  severity  wholly  relies,  is  a  master  motive 
only  with  the  weak,  and  only  while  it  is  very  present.  As  soon 
as  there  is  a  chance  of  escaping  detection  it  evaporates,  and,  it 
would  seem,  the  more  completely  in  proportion  as  the  very 
magnitude  of  the  penalty  makes  it  difficult  for  a  man  really  to 
imagine  himself  as  the  central  figure  in  so  terrible  a  drama. 
Finally,  the  infliction  of  heavy  penalties  for  secondary  crimes 
may  induce  a  reckless  despair,  and  the  saying  about  the  sheep 
and  the  lamb  was  but  too  apt  a  comment  on  the  working  of  the 
criminal  law  at  the  time.  Thus  the  first  step  of  reform  was  to 
abolish  the  ferocious  penalties  of  the  old  law.  In  this  direction  a 
long  list  of  well-known  and  honored  names,  Beccaria,  Howard, 
Bentham,    Romilly,    Fowell   Buxton,   Elizabeth   Fry,   indicate 

admitted  by  the  circumstances  to  all  concerned.  If  any  evil  (suffering  or 
loss  of  character)  is  inflicted  on  the  criminal  which  is  not  absolutely  necessi- 
tated by  social  security,  or  the  ultimate  welfare  of  the  criminal  himself,  it  is 
evil  inflicted  for  its  own  sake,  which  is  the  essence  of  immorality. 


LAW  AND  JUSTICE  369 

roughly  the  intellectual  and  moral  influences  at  work.  The 
Society  of  Friends,  French  Rationalists,  English  Utilitarians  and 
the  Evangelicals  played  their  part  in  this,  as  in  so  many  of  the 
changes  that  have  made  the  modern  world.  The  movement 
was  under  way  by  the  second  third  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Beccaria's  book  was  published  in  1764  and  had  an  immediate 
success,  bearing  early  fruit  in  the  abolition  of  torture  on  the 
Continent.  Branding  was  abolished  in  England  in  1779.  Capital 
punishment  had  been  abolished  for  a  time  in  Russia  in  1753,  and 
the  purchase  of  prisoners  as  galley  slaves  was  forbidden  by  Maria 
Theresa  in  1762.  In  England  the  peine  forte  et  dure  was  abol- 
ished in  1772,  and  in  1770  a  House  of  Commons  committee  even 
reported  that  there  were  some  offenses  for  which  the  death  pen- 
alty might  with  advantage  be  exchanged  for  some  other  punish- 
ment. These  few  indications  show  that  the  tide  was  beginning 
to  turn.  In  France  the  movement  was  hastened  by  the  Revolu- 
tion. The  Declaration  of  Rights  in  1789  laid  down  the  control- 
ling principle  of  the  modern  theory  that  "the  right  to  punish  is 
limited  by  the  law  of  necessity,"  and  this  was  supplemented  in 
1 79 1  by  the  declaration  of  the  Assembly  that  "penalties  should 
be  proportioned  to  the  crimes  for  which  they  are  inflicted,  and 
that  they  are  intended  not  merely  to  punish,  but  to  reform  the 
culprit."  In  accordance  with  this  principle  the  Assembly  made 
imprisonment  the  chief  method  of  punishment,  and  founded 
the  penitentiary  system  of  France.  In  England  the  great  re- 
action produced  by  the  Revolution  retarded  the  reform  of  the 
criminal  law,  but  throughout  the  time  of  the  Revolutionary 
Wars,  men  like  Romilly  fought  an  uphill  fight.  He  succeeded 
in  suppressing  the  death  penalty  for  pocket-picking  in  1808,  but 
his  subsequent  efforts  to  abolish  capital  punishment  for  stealing 
goods  of  the  value  of  five  shillings  from  shops  were  frustrated  by 
the  House  of  Lords.  Little  progress,  in  fact,  was  made  till  1832, 
when  horse  and  sheep  stealing  ceased  to  be  capital,  and  from  this 
time  onwards  the  list  of  capital  offenses  was  steadily  reduced, 
till  in  1 86 1  murder  was  for  all  practical  purposes  the  only  one  that 
remained. 


370  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

Meanwhile,  as  sul)stilutes  for  the  old  savagery,  there  grew  up 
first  the  transportation  and  then  the  penitentiary  system.  Re- 
garded as  a  means  of  giving  the  offender  a  fresh  start  in  life  in 
new  surroundings  remote  from  his  old  bad  associates  and  the 
memory  of  his  crimes,  transportation  has  much  to  recommend 
it,  but  it  was  clearly  incompatible  with  colonial  development. 
It  was  necessary  to  fall  back  on  the  prison  system,  and  the  ef- 
forts of  reformers  have  been  devoted  to  the  task  of  making  con- 
finement —  a  thing  soul-destructive  in  itself  —  as  nearly  com- 
patible as  may  be  with  the  regeneration  of  the  prisoner.  These 
efforts  have  hardly  passed  the  experimental  stage,  yet  certain  re- 
sults have  emerged.  The  necessity  for  a  classification  which 
prevents  the  first  offender  from  being  contaminated  by  the  hard- 
ened jail-bird,  the  benefits  of  action  and  practical  employment, 
the  superiority  of  hope  to  fear  as  a  stimulus  to  good  conduct  and 
the  consequent  advantages  to  be  found  in  allowing  the  convict 
means  of  improving  his  position  and  even  shortening  his  sen- 
tence by  good  behavior,  are  matters  of  general  agreement.  But 
it  is  clearly  necessary  to  go  further  than  this.  The  plan  of  im- 
prisoning a  man  for  a  longer  or  shorter  term,  and  then  without 
asking  what  effect  his  experience  is  likely  to  have  had  on  him, 
turning  him  loose  again  upon  society,  a  broken  human  being  less 
capable  than  ever  of  earning  an  honest  living,  cannot  stand. 
The  old  way  of  hanging  at  least  rid  society  of  the  criminal.  It 
stood  condemned  for  its  utter  barbarity,  which  was  indirectly  as 
harmful  to  society  as  it  was  cruel  to  the  sufferer.  The  modern 
method  is  still  a  terrible  penalty,  at  least  to  the  better  sort  of 
criminals,  and  far  from  relieving  society  of  their  presence,  tends 
to  harden  and  degrade  them  further.  Hence  judicious  thinkers 
Uke  Frederick  Hill,  in  his  report  of  1839,  soon  recognized  that  a 
more  thorough  system  was  required.  The  offender  must  be  re- 
formed, and  at  need  he  must  even  be  detained  until  he  was  given 
good  promise  of  reformation,  and  society  must  help  him  back 
into  honest  ways.  The  most  thoroughgoing  attempt  in  this 
direction  is  that  of  the  Elmira  system,  followed  now  in  several 
American  states,  in  which,  the  sentence  being  wholly  or  within 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  371 

limits  indeterminate,  the  fate  of  the  convict  depends  on  his  own 
exertions.  He  can  raise  himself  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  grade 
by  continued  good  behavior,  and  finally  can  obtain  liberation  on 
parole. 

13.  Whatever  the  outcome  of  these  experiments,  the  modern 
state  stands  committed  to  the  humane  method  of  criminal  treat- 
ment, and  could  not  revert  to  the  old  plan  save  at  the  risk  of  a  gen- 
eral rebarbarization.  That  being  so,  it  is  necessary  to  push  the 
new  method  through  and  to  treat  the  criminal  throughout  as  a 
"case  "  to  be  understood  and  cured.  We  touch  here  the  scientific 
conception  underlying  the  modern  theory  of  punishment.  Crime, 
like  everything  else  that  men  do  or  suffer,  is  the  outcome  of 
definite  conditions.  These  conditions  may  be  psychological  or 
physical,  personal  or  social.  They  arise  in  the  character  of  the 
agent  as  it  has  grown  up  in  him  from  birth  in  interaction  with  the 
circumstances  of  his  life.  We  may  recognize  them  in  social  sur- 
roundings, in  overcrowding  or  underfeeding,  in  the  sense  of 
despair  produced  by  the  denial  of  justice,  or  in  the  overweening 
insolence  of  social  superiority.  But  whatever  they  may  be,  if 
we  wish  to  prevent  crime,  we  must  discover  the  conditions  operat- 
ing to  produce  crime  and  act  upon  them.  This  does  not  destroy, 
but  defines  personal  responsibility.  The  last  link  in  the  chain  of 
causation  which  produces  any  act  is  always  the  disposition  of  the 
agent  at  the  time  of  action,  and  unless  dominated  by  ungovernable 
impulse,^  this  disposition  is  always  modifiable  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  fresh  motive  as  a  weight  in  the  scale.  But  though  not 
destroyed,  responsibility  is  transformed  by  science,  and  with  it 
the  whole  conception  of  punishment.-     When  a  wicked  act  was 

^  This  makes  no  exception  to  the  general  statement  that  character  is  the 
cause  of  action,  since  that  paralysis  of  the  will  which  leaves  a  man  the  sport 
of  impulse  is  itself  a  matter  of  character.  As  to  control  of  man's  conduct  by 
heredity  much  nonsense  is  talked.  Heredity  is  not  a  force  controlling  a  man 
from  without,  but  a  short  expression  for  the  supposed  Antecedent  causes  of 
the  qualities  which  make  him  what  he  is,  and  by  what  he  is,  he  is  to  be  judged, 
so  far  as  he  is  judged  at  all. 

2  Responsibility,  properly  understood,  is  definable  as  the  capacity  to  be 
determined  by  an  adequate  motive.     A  man  is  responsible  who  knows  what 


372  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

held  to  be  something  arising  in  a  spontaneous  arbitrary  manner 
from  the  unmotived  evil  choice  of  a  man,  the  vindictive  retribu- 
tion which  is  founded  on  instinct  and  fostered  by  the  needs  of 
early  society  seemed  amply  justified.     When  good  and  evil  alike 
are  seen  to  grow  out  of  assignable  antecedents  by  processes  which 
calmly  judging  men  can  pretty  closely  foretell,  to  rest  on  laws 
of  growth  and  disease  which  apply  to  character  as  other  laws 
apply  to  the  physical  organism,  to  express  the  lack  of  imagina- 
tion or  low  power  of  reasoning  which  makes  men  hard,  cruel,  and 
unjust,  or  to  flow  from  the  over-excitement  or  insufficient  satis- 
faction of  physical  impulses  that  makes  them  a  prey  to  lust  or 
alcohol,  then  every  thinking  man  is  made  to  feel  in  a  new  sense 
that  but  for  the  grace  of  conditions  which  he  has  only  very  par- 
tially  and   imperfectly    controlled,    there   where   the   criminal 
passes  to  disgrace  and  misery  goes  he  himself,  the  juryman,  the 
judge,  the  newspaper  reader  who  explodes  in  satisfaction  over  the 
swinging  sentence.     No  one  can  fully  face  the  problem  of  respon- 
sibility and  become,  however  dimly,  aware  of  the  multitudinous 
roots  from  which  character  and  conduct  spring,  without  feeling 
the  utter  inadequacy  of  the  retributive  theory  of  punishment. 
Vindictiveness  has  its  natural  sphere  in  the  stage  at  which  crime 
is  only  known  as  an  injury  to  be  revenged.     As  soon  as  it  be- 
comes a  wrong  act  to  be  punished,  the  nature  of  wrong  and  the 
meaning  of  punishment  have  to  be  reconsidered.     If  the  first 
principle  of  rational  ethics  is  that  action  can  only  be  justified  by 
doing  good  to  those  whom  it  affects,  this  principle  receives  a 
striking  confirmation  from  the  one  quarter  in  which  its  applica- 
tion might  seem  doubtful.     For  a  natural  impulse  makes  us 
desire  to  harm  the  wicked,  but  the  history  of  criminal  law  and  the 
philosophical  analysis  of  responsibility  combine  to  prove  to  us 
that  this  is  the  impulse  of  the  Old  Adam  and  not  warranted  by 

is  expected  of  him,  understands  the  consequences  of  his  action,  and  is  deter- 
mined therein  by  that  knowledge.  Reward  and  punishment,  praise  and 
blame,  are  therefore  justly  awarded  in  so  far  as  they  affect  action.  Beyond 
this,  retribution  is  inapplicable,  and  praise  and  blame  pass  into  admiration 
and  pity. 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  373 

reason  or  justice.  Justice,  in  punishment  as  in  other  things, 
seeks  the  good  of  all  whom  it  affects,  of  the  criminal  as  of  the  in- 
jured party.  Yet  all  true  punishment  inflicts  pain,  for  precisely 
the  truest  punishment  consists  in  the  full  realization  of  the  char- 
acter of  what  one  has  done.  This  realization,  with  all  the  mental 
misery  that  it  involves,  we  may  justly  wish  to  be  the  lot  of  every 
criminal,  whether  convicted  or  unconvicted,  whether  despised 
or,  like  the  greatest  offenders,  honored  by  the  world.  So  far 
pain  is  rightly  attached  to  wrongdoing  as,  ethically  speaking, 
its  inevitable  consequence.  But  any  other  sort  of  pain,  any 
physical  suffering  that  has  no  such  healing  moral  effect,  may  grat- 
ify an  animal  thirst  for  vengeance  but  has  no  solace  for  our 
moral  thirst  for  the  triumph,  even  in  the  mind  of  the  wrongdoer 
of  the  righteousness  which  he  has  set  at  naught. 

The  modern  state  upholds  its  members  in  the  enjoyment  of 
their  rights  and  gives  them  redress  for  injuries  to  themselves  in 
the  civil  courts.  It  also  intervenes  on  its  own  motion  to  main- 
tain public  order  by  the  punishment  of  lawbreakers.  Religious 
and  political  offenses  falling  into  the  background,  legal  of- 
fenses tend  to  be  restricted  to  criminal  acts,  and  punishment  to 
be  proportioned  to  the  imputed  degree  of  moral  guilt. ^  But  this 
ethical  view  of  punishment,  when  pushed  home,  compels  the 
admission  that  the  individual  theory  of  responsibility  is  no  more 
final  than  the  old  collective  theory,  and  punishment  is  compelled 
to  justify  itself  by  its  actual  effect  on  society  in  maintaining 
order  without  legalizing  brutality,  on  the  criminal  in  deterring 
him  or  in  aiding  his  reform,  in  both  relations  as  doing  good,  not 
as  doing  harm.     The  criminal,  too,  has  his  rights  —  the  right 

^  The  converse  proposition  that  wicked  acts  are  all  treated  as  legal 
offenses  does  not  follow,  nor  is  it  true  of  the  modern  state.  The  questions 
as  to  the  sphere  of  the  state  which  arise  here  cannot  be  dealt  with  on  this 
occasion. 

Offenses  against  the  pubhc  order  do  not  constitute  an  exception  to  the 
statement  in  the  text.  In  themselves  they  are  slight  offenses,  and  the 
penalty  is  always  light,  but  the  deliberate  defiance  of  the  public  order  is  of 
course  an  immoral  act  unless  justified  by  some  bad  end  which  that  order 
may  be  made  to  serve. 


374  LEONARD   TRELAWNEY  HOBHOUSE 

to  be  punished,  but  so  punished  that  he  may  be  helped  in  the  path 
of  reform. 

Briefly  to  resume  the  main  phases  in  the  evolution  of  public 
justice,  we  find  that  at  the  outset  the  community  interferes 
mainly  on  what  we  may  call  supernatural  grounds  only  with 
actions  which  are  regarded  as  endangering  its  own  existence. 
Otherwise  justice,  as  we  know  it,  in  the  sense  of  an  impartial 
upholding  of  rights  and  an  impartial  punishment  of  wrongdoing, 
is  unknown.  In  place  of  that  we  have  at  the  outset  purely 
private  and  personal  retaliation.  This  develops  into  the  sys- 
tematized blood  feuds  of  consolidated  families  and  clans.  At 
this  stage  responsibility  is  collective,  redress  is  collective,  in- 
tention is  ignored,  and  there  is  no  question  of  assessing  punish- 
ment according  to  the  merit  of  the  individual.  When  retalia- 
tion is  mitigated  by  the  introduction  of  money  payments  no 
change  in  ethical  principle  occurs.  It  is  only  as  social  order 
evolves  an  independent  organ  for  the  adjustment  of  disputes 
and  the  prevention  of  crime,  that  the  ethical  idea  becomes  sepa- 
rated out  from  the  conflicting  passions  which  are  its  earlier 
husk,  and  step  by  step  the  individual  is  separated  from  his  family, 
his  intentions  are  taken  into  account,  his  formal  rectitude  or 
want  of  rectitude  is  thrown  into  the  background  by  the  essential 
justice  of  the  case,  appeals  to  magical  processes  are  abandoned, 
and  the  law  sets  before  itself  the  aim  of  discovering  the  facts  and 
maintaining  right  or  punishing  wrong  accordingly. 

The  rise  of  public  justice  proper  necessitates  the  gradual  aban- 
donment of  the  whole  conception  of  the  trial  as  a  struggle  be- 
tween two  parties,  and  substitutes  the  idea  of  ascertaining  the 
actual  truth  in  order  that  justice  may  be  done.  That  is  at  first 
carried  out  by  supernatural  means,  viz.  by  the  ordeal  and  the 
oath.  These  in  turn  give  way  to  a  true  judicial  inquiry  by 
evidence  and  rational  proof.  The  transition  occurred  in  Eng- 
land mainly  during  the  thirteenth  century,  the  turning  point 
being  marked  by  the  prohibition  of  the  ordeal  by  Innocent  III 
in  1 2 15.  The  early  stages  of  public  justice  administered  by  the 
recently  developed  central   power   led   to   excessive   barbarity 


LAW  AND   JUSTICE  375 

in  the  discovery  and  punishment  of  crime.  It  took  some  more 
centuries  to  prove  to  the  world  that  efficacy  in  these  relations 
could  be  reconciled  with  humanity  and  a  rational  consideration 
of  the  best  means  of  getting  at  truth.  By  so  long  and  round- 
about a  process  is  a  result,  so  simple  and  obvious  to  our  minds, 
attained. 


XIII 

'   THE  PROSPECTS  OF  POPULAR  GOVERNMENT 

Henry  Sumner  Maine 

[Sir  Henry  James  Sumner  Maine  (1822-1888)  was  a  prominent  British 
statesman  and  student  of  politics.  He  held  important  lectureships  in  civil 
law  and  jurisprudence  at  Cambridge  and  Oxford  and  produced  a  number  of 
works,  notably  his  Ancient  Law,  published  in  1861,  which  are  regarded  as 
among  the  first  to  utilize  the  new  "historical  method"  in  the  study  of  po- 
litical and  legal  institutions. 

The  Prospects  of  Popular  Government,  from  the  author's  Popular  Govern- 
ment, 1885,  is  by  no  means  a  wholly  conclusive  analysis  of  modern  democ- 
racy. It  can  scarcely  be  questioned  that  the  writer  is  moved  by  something 
dangerously  like  prejudice  against  pure  democracy.  But  the  essay  is  so 
accurate  in  its  presentation  of  the  points  of  debate,  so  concrete  in  illustra- 
tion, and  most  importantly,  so  wholly  uninfluenced  by  the  glamour  of  patri- 
otic enthusiasm  over  the  generally  assumed  success  of  democratic  govern- 
ment, that  it  possesses  a  stimulus  to  interest  frequently  lacking  in  more 
scientific  or  more  impartial  writings.  Touching  closely  the  question  of  the 
success  of  the  democratic  idea  in  England  and  America,  Maine's  work 
met  with  adverse  criticism  from  some  of  the  most  prominent  thinkers 
of  the  day.  The  ground  upon  which  it  was  assailed  was  that  although  it  ex- 
hibits much  poHtical  and  legal  erudition,  its  attitude  is  deduced  from  the  his- 
tory of  democratic  theory,  corrected  by  casual  observation  of  the  results, 
rather  than  from  the  history  of  democracy  itself.  This  weakness  is  discussed 
in  a  review  by  John  Morley,  reprinted  in  his  Studies  in  Literature.  A  reply 
to  Maine's  argument  directed  primarily  at  his  comments  upon  democratic 
rule  in  the  United  States  is  found  in  Lawrence  Godkin's  An  American  View 
of  Popular  Government,  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  February,  1886.  God- 
kin's  criticism  was  answered  by  Maine  in  the  March  number.] 

The  blindness  of  the  privileged  classes  in  France  to  the  Revo- 
lution which  was  about  to  overwhelm  them  furnishes  some  of 
the  best- worn  commonplaces  of  modern  history.  There  was,  no 
doubt,  much  in  it  to  surprise  us.     What  king,  noble,  and  priest 

376 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      377 

could  not  see,  had  been  easily  visible  to  the  foreign  observer. 
"In  short,"  runs  the  famous  passage  in  Chesterfield's  letter  of 
December  25,  1753,  "all  the  symptoms  which  I  ever  met  with  in 
history  previous  to  great  changes  and  revolutions  in  government 
now  exist  and  daily  increase  in  France."  A  large  number  of 
writers  of  our  day,  manifesting  the  wisdom  which  comes  after 
the  event,  have  pointed  out  that  the  signs  of  a  terrible  time  ought 
not  to  have  been  mistaken.  The  court,  the  aristocracy,  and 
the  clergy  should  have  understood  that,  in  face  of  the  irreligion 
which  was  daily  becoming  more  fashionable,  the  belief  in  privi- 
lege conferred  by  birth  could  not  be  long  maintained.  They 
should  have  noted  the  portents  of  imminent  political  disturbance 
in  the  intense  jealousy  of  classes.  They  should  have  been  pre- 
pared for  a  tremendous  social  upheaval  by  the  squalor  and  mis- 
ery of  the  peasants.  They  should  have  observed  the  immediate 
causes  of  revolution  in  the  disorder  of  the  finances  and  in  the 
gross  inequality  of  taxation.  They  should  have  been  wise 
enough  to  know  that  the  entire  structure,  of  which  the  keystone 
was  a  stately  and  scandalous  court,  was  undermined  on  all  sides. 
"Beautiful  Armida  Palace,  where  the  inmates  live  enchanted 
lives ;  lapped  in  soft  music  of  adulation ;  waited  on  by  the  splen- 
dors of  the  world ;  which  nevertheless  hangs  wondrously  as  by  a 
single  hair."^ 

But  although  Chesterfield  appeals  to  history,  the  careful 
modern  student  of  history  will  perhaps  think  the  blindness  of  the 
French  nobility  and  clergy  eminently  pardonable.  The  mon- 
archy, under  whose  broad  shelter  all  privilege  grew  and  seemed 
to  thrive,  appeared  to  have  its  roots  deeper  in  the  past  than  any 
existing  European  institution.  The  countries  which  now  made 
up  France  had  enjoyed  no  experience  of  popular  government 
since  the  rude  Gaulish  freedom.  From  this,  they  had  passed  into 
the  condition  of  a  strictly  administered,  strongly  governed,  highly 
taxed,  Roman  province.  The  investigations  of  the  young  and 
learned  school  of  historians  rising  in  France  leave  it  question- 
able whether  the  Germans,  who  are  sometimes  supposed  to  have 
1  Carlyle,  French  Revolution,  vol.  vi,  p.  4. 


378  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

redeemed  their  own  barbarism  by  reviving  liberty,  brought 
anything  like  freedom  to  Gaul.  There  was  little  more  than  a 
succession  of  German  to  Roman  privileged  classes.  German  cap- 
tains shared  the  great  estates,  and  assumed  the  rank  of  the  half- 
official,  half-hereditary  nobility,  who  abounded  in  the  province. 
A  German  king,  who  was  in  reality  only  a  Roman  general  bear- 
ing a  barbarous  title,  reigned  over  much  of  Gaul  and  much  of 
central  Europe.  When  his  race  was  supplanted  by  another  in 
its  kingship,  the  new  power  got  itself  decorated  with  the  old 
Roman  Imperial  style ;  and  when  at  length  a  third  dynasty  arose, 
the  monarchy  associated  with  it  gradually  developed  more  vigor 
and  vitality  than  any  other  political  institution  in  Europe. 
From  the  accession  of  Hugh  Capet  to  the  French  Revolution, 
there  had  been  as  nearly  as  possible  800  years.  During  all  this 
time,  the  French  royal  house  had  steadily  gained  in  power. 
It  had  wearied  out  and  beaten  back  the  victorious  armies  of 
England.  It  had  emerged  stronger  than  ever  from  the  wars  of 
religion  which  humbled  English  kingship  in  the  dust,  dealing  it 
a  blow  from  which  it  never  thoroughly  recovered.  It  had  grown 
in  strength,  authority,  and  splendor,  till  it  dazzled  all  eyes.  It 
had  become  the  model  for  all  princes.  Nor  had  its  government 
and  its  relation  to  its  subjects  struck  all  men  as  they  seem  to  have 
struck  Chesterfield.  Eleven  years  before  Chesterfield  wrote, 
David  Hume,  a  careful  observer  of  France,  had  thus  written  in 
1742:  "Though  all  kinds  of  government  be  improved  in  modern 
times,  yet  monarchical  government  seems  to  have  made  the 
greatest  advance  to  perfection.  It  may  now  be  affirmed  of 
civilized  monarchies,  what  was  formerly  said  of  republics  alone, 
that  they  are  a  government  of  laws,  not  of  men.  They  are  found 
susceptible  of  order,  method,  and  constancy,  to  a  surprising  de- 
gree. Property  is  there  secure ;  industry  is  encouraged ;  the  arts 
flourish ;  and  the  prince  lives  among  his  subjects  like  a  father 
among  his  children."  And  Hume  expressly  adds  that  he  saw 
more  "sources  of  degeneracy"  in  free  governments  like  England 
than  in  France,  "the  most  perfect  model  of  pure  monarchy."  ^ 
1  Hume.  Essay  xii,  "Of  Civil  Liberty." 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      379 

Nevertheless,  Hume  was  unquestionably  wrong  in  his  con- 
clusion, and  Chesterfield  was  as  unquestionably  right.  The 
French  privileged  classes  might  conceivably  have  foreseen  the 
great  Revolution,  simply  because  it  happened.  The  time,  how- 
ever, which  is  expended  in  wondering  at  their  blindness,  or  in 
pitying  it  with  an  air  of  superior  wisdom,  is  as  nearly  as  possible 
wasted.  Next  to  what  a  modern  satirist  has  called  "hypothet- 
ics"  —  the  science  of  that  which  might  have  happened  but  did 
not  —  there  is  no  more  unprofitable  study  than  the  investigation 
of  the  possibly  predictable,  which  was  never  predicted.  It  is  of 
far  higher  advantage  to  note  the  mental  condition  of  the  French 
upper  classes  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  in  history,  and 
to  ask  ourselves  whether  it  conveys  a  caution  to  other  generations 
than  theirs.  This  line  of  speculation  is  at  the  least  interesting. 
We  too,  who  belong  to  western  Europe  towards  the  end  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  live  under  a  set  of  institutions  which  all,  ex- 
cept a  small  minority,  regard  as  likely  to  be  perpetual.  Nine 
men  out  of  ten,  some  hoping,  some  fearing,  look  upon  the  popu- 
lar government  which,  ever  widening  its  basis,  has  spread  and 
is  still  spreading  over  the  world,  as  destined  to  last  forever,  or, 
if  it  changes  its  form,  to  change  it  in  one  single  direction.  The 
democratic  principle  has  gone  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer, 
and  its  gainsayers  are  few  and  feeble.  Some  Catholics,  from 
whose  minds  the  diplomacy  of  the  present  Pope  has  not  banished 
the  syllabus  of  the  last,  a  fairly  large  body  of  French  and  Spanish 
Legitimists,  and  a  few  aged  courtiers  in  the  small  circles  sur- 
rounding exiled  German  and  Italian  princes,  may  still  believe 
that  the  cloud  of  democratic  ascendency  will  pass  away.  Their 
hopes  may  be  as  vain  as  their  regrets ;  but  nevertheless  those 
who  recollect  the  surprises  which  the  future  had  in  store  for  men 
equally  confident  in  the  perpetuity  of  the  present,  will  ask  them- 
selves whether  it  is  really  true  that  the  expectation  of  virtual 
permanence  for  governments  of  the  modern  type  rests  upon 
solid  grounds  of  historical  experience  as  regards  the  past,  and  of 
rational  probability  as  regards  the  time  to  come.  I  endeavor 
in  these  pages  to  examine  the  question  in  a  spirit  different  from 


380  HENRY  SUMNER   MAINE 

that  which  animates  most  of  those  who  view  the  advent  of  de 
mocracy  either  with  enthusiasm  or  with  despair. 

Out  of  the  many  names  commonly  applied  to  the  political  sys- 
tem prevaiHng  or  tending  to  prevail  in  all  the  civilized  portions 
of  the  world,  I  have  chosen  "popular  government"  ^  as  the  name 
which,  on  the  whole,  is  least  open  to  objection.  But  what  we 
are  witnessing  in  west  European  politics  is  not  so  much  the 
establishment  of  a  definite  system,  as  the  continuance,  at  vary- 
ing rates,  of  a  process.  The  truth  is  that,  within  two  hundred 
years,  the  view  taken  of  government,  or  (as  the  jurists  say)  of  the 
relation  of  sovereign  to  subject,  of  political  superior  to  political 
inferior,  has  been  changing,  sometimes  partially  and  slowly, 
sometimes  generally  and  rapidly.  The  character  of  this  change 
has  been  described  by  John  Stuart  Mill,  in  the  early  pages  of  his 
Essay  on  Liberty,  and  more  recently  by  Mr.  Justice  Stephen, 
who  in  his  History  of  the  Criminal  Law  of  England  very  strik- 
ingly uses  the  contrast  between  the  old  and  the  new  view  of 
government  to  illustrate  the  difference  between  two  views  of  the 
law  of  seditious  libel.  I  will  quote  the  latter  passage  as  less 
colored  than  the  language  of  Mill  by  the  special  preferences  of 
the  writer : 

"  Two  diflferent  views  may  be  taken  of  the  relation  between 
rulers  and  their  subjects.  If  the  ruler  is  regarded  as  the 
superior  of  the  subject,  as  being  by  the  nature  of  his  position 
presumably  wise  and  good,  the  rightful  ruler  and  guide  of  the 
whole  population,  it  must  necessarily  follow  that  it  is  wrong  to 
censure  him  openly,  and,  even  if  he  is  mistaken,  his  mistakes 
should  be  pointed  out  with  the  utmost  respect,  and  that, 
whether  mistaken  or  not,  no  censure  should  be  cast  on  him 
likely  or  designed  to  diminish  his  authority.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  ruler  is  regarded  as  the  agent  and  servant,  and  the 
subject  as  the  wise  and  good  master,  who  is  obliged  to  delegate 
his  power  to  the  so-called  ruler  because,  being  a  multitude,  he 

^  It  will  be  seen  that  I  endeavor  to  use  the  term  "democracy,"  through- 
out this  volume,  in  its  proper  and  only  consistent  sense;  that  is,  for  a  par- 
ticular form  of  government. 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      381 

cannot  use  it  himself,  it  must  be  evident  that  this  sentiment 
must  be  reversed.  Every  member  of  the  pubHc  who  censures 
the  ruler  for  the  time  being  exercises  in  his  own  person  the 
right  which  belongs  to  the  whole  of  which  he  forms  a  part.  He 
is  finding  fault  with  his  own  servant."  ^ 

The  states  of  Europe  are  now  regulated  by  political  institu- 
tions answering  to  the  various  stages  of  the  transition  from  the 
old  view,  that  "rulers  are  presumably  wise  and  good, the  rightful 
rulers  and  guides  of  the  whole  population,"  to  the  newer  view, 
that  "  the  ruler  is  the  agent  and  servant,  and  the  subject  the  wise 
and  good  master,  who  is  obliged  to  delegate  his  power  to  the  so- 
called  ruler  because,  being  a  multitude,  he  cannot  use  it  him- 
self."    Russia  and  Turkey  are  the  only  European  states  which 
completely  reject  the  theory  that  governments  hold  their  powers 
by  delegation  from  the  community,  the  word  "community" 
being  somewhat  vaguely  understood,  but  tending  more  and  more 
to  mean  at  least  the  whole  of  the  males  of  full  age  living  within 
certain  territorial  limits.     This  theory,  which  is  known  on  the 
Continent  as  the  theory  of  national  sovereignty,  has  been  fully 
accepted  in  France,  Italy,  Spain,  Portugal,  Holland,  Belgium, 
Greece,  and  the  Scandinavian  states.     In  Germany  it  has  been 
repeatedly  repudiated  by  the  Emperor  and  his  powerful  minister, 
but  it  is  to  a  very  great  extent  acted  upon.     England,  as  is  not 
unusual  with  her,  stands  by  herself.     There  is  no  country  in 
which  the  newer  view  of  government  is  more  thoroughly  applied 
to  practice,  but  almost  all  the  language  of  the  law  and  constitu- 
tion is  still  accommodated  to  the  older  ideas  concerning  the  rela- 
tion of  ruler  and  subject. 

But,  although  no  such  inference  could  be  drawn  from  English 
legal  phraseology,  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  modern  popular 
government  of  our  day  is  of  purely  English  origin.  When  it  came 
into  existence,  there  were  republics  in  Europe,  but  they  exercised 
no  moral  and  little  political  influence.  Although  in  point  of 
fact  they  were  most  of  them  strict  oligarchies,  they  were  regarded 
as  somewhat  plebeian  governments,  over  which  monarchies  took 
1  Stephen's  History  of  the  Criminal  Law  of  England,  vol.  ii.,  p.  299. 


382  HENRY   SUMNER   MAINE 

rightful  precedence.  "The  republics  in  Europe,"  writes  Hume 
in  1742,  "are  at  present  noted  for  want  of  politeness.  The  good 
manners  of  a  Swiss  civilized  in  Holland  is  an  expression  for  rus- 
ticity among  the  French.  The  English  in  some  degree  fall  under 
the  same  censure,  notwithstanding  their  learning  and  genius. 
And  if  the  Venetians  be  an  exception,  they  owe  it  perhaps  to  their 
communication  with  other  Italians."  If  a  man  then  called  him- 
self a  republican,  he  was  thinking  of  the  Athenian  or  Roman 
republic,  one  for  a  while  in  a  certain  sense  a  democracy,  the 
other  from  first  to  last  an  aristocracy,  but  both  ruling  a  depend- 
ent empire  with  the  utmost  severity.  In  reality,  the  new  prin- 
ciple of  government  was  solely  established  in  England,  which 
Hume  always  classes  with  republics  rather  than  with  monar- 
chies. After  tremendous  civil  struggles,  the  doctrine  that  gov- 
ernments serve  the  community  was,  in  spirit  if  not  in  words, 
affirmed  in  1689.  But  it  was  long  before  this  doctrine  was  either 
fully  carried  out  by  the  nation  or  fully  accepted  by  its  rulers. 
William  HI  was  merely  a  foreign  politician  and  general,  who  sub- 
mitted to  the  eccentricities  of  his  subjects  for  the  sake  of  using 
their  wealth  and  arms  in  foreign  war.  On  this  point  the  admis- 
sions of  Macaulay  are  curiously  in  harmony  with  the  view  of 
William  taken  in  the  instructions  of  Louis  XIV  to  his  diploma- 
tists which  have  lately  been  published.  Anne  certainly  believed 
in  her  own  quasi-divine  right ;  and  George  I  and  George  II  were 
humbler  kings  of  the  same  type  as  William,  who  thought  that 
the  proper  and  legitimate  form  of  government  was  to  be  found, 
not  in  England,  but  in  Hanover.  As  soon  as  England  had  in 
George  HI  a  king  who  cared  more  for  English  politics  than  for 
foreign  war,  he  repudiated  the  doctrine  altogether ;  nor  can  it 
be  said  that  it  was  really  admitted  by  any  English  sovereign 
until,  possibly,  the  present  reign.  But  even  when  the  horror  of 
the  French  Revolution  was  at  its  highest,  the  politician,  who 
would  have  been  much  in  danger  of  prosecution  if  he  had  toasted 
the  people  as  the  "sole  legitimate  source  of  power,"  could  always 
save  himself  by  drinking  to  "the  principles  which  placed  the 
House  of  Hanover  on  the  throne."    These  principles  in  the 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      383 

meantime  were  more  and  more  becoming  the  actual  rule  of  gov- 
ernment, and  before  George  III  died  they  had  begun  their  vic- 
torious march  over  Europe. 

Popular  government,  as  first  known  to  the  English,  began  to 
command  the  interest  of  the  Continent  through  the  admiration 
with  which  it  inspired  a  certain  set  of  French  thinkers  towards 
the  middle  of  the  last  century.  At  the  outset,  it  was  not  Eng- 
lish Hberty  which  attracted  them,  but  English  toleration  and 
also  English  irreligion,  the  last  one  of  the  most  fugitive  phases 
through  which  the  mind  of  a  portion  of  the  nation  passed,  but 
one  which  so  struck  the  foreign  observer  that,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century,  we  find  Napoleon  Bonaparte  claiming  the 
assistance  of  the  Pope  as  rightfully  his  because  he  was  the  enemy 
of  the  British  misbeliever.  Gradually  the  educated  classes  of 
France,  at  whose  feet  sat  the  educated  class  of  all  Continental 
countries,  came  to  interest  themselves  in  English  political  insti- 
tutions ;  and  then  came  two  events,  one  of  which  greatly  en- 
couraged, while  the  other  in>  the  end  greatly  discouraged,  the 
tendency  of  popular  government  to  diffuse  itself.  The  first  of 
them  was  the  foundation  of  the  United  States.  The  American 
constitution  is  distinctively  English ;  this  might  be  proved 
alone,  as  Mr.  Freeman  has  acutely  observed,  by  its  taking  two 
Houses,  instead  of  one,  or  three,  or  more,  as  the  normal  structure 
of  a  legislative  assembly.  It  is  in  fact  the  English  constitution 
carefully  adapted  to  a  body  of  Englishmen  who  had  never  had 
much  to  do  with  an  hereditary  king  and  an  aristocracy  of  birth, 
and  who  had  determined  to  dispense  with  them  altogether.  The 
American  republic  has  greatly  influenced  the  favor  into  which 
popular  government  grew.  It  disproved  the  once  universal 
assumptions,  that  no  republic  could  govern  a  large  territory, 
and  that  no  strictly  republican  government  could  be  stable. 
But  at  first  the  Republic  became  interesting  for  other  reasons. 
It  now  became  possible  for  Continental  Europeans  to  admire 
popular  government  without  submitting  to  the  somewhat  bitter 
necessity  of  admiring  the  English,  who  till  lately  had  been  the 
;  most  unpopular  of  European  nations.     Frenchmen  in  particular, 


384  HENRY   SUMNER   MMNE 

who  had  helped  and  perhaps  enabled  the  Americans  to  obtain 
their  independence,  naturally  admired  institutions  which  were 
indirectly  their  own  creation ;  and  Frenchmen  who  had  not 
served  in  the  American  war  saw  the  American  freeman  reflected 
in  Franklin,  who  pleased  the  school  of  Voltaire  because  he  be- 
lieved nothing,  and  the  school  of  Rousseau  because  he  wore  a 
Quaker  coat.  The  other  event  strongly  influencing  the  fortunes 
of  popvdar  government  was  the  French  Revolution,  which  in  the 
long  run  rendered  it  an  object  of  horror.  The  French,  in  their 
new  constitutions,  followed  first  the  English  and  then  the 
American  model,  but  in  both  cases  with  large  departures  from  the 
originals.  The  result  in  both  cases  was  miserable  miscarriage. 
Political  liberty  took  long  to  recover  from  the  discredit  into 
which  it  had  been  plunged  by  the  Reign  of  Terror.  In  England, 
detestation  of  the  Revolution  did  not  cease  to  influence  poHtics 
till  1830.  But,  abroad,  there  was  a  reaction  to  the  older  type  of 
popular  government  in  18 14  and  181 5  ;  and  it  was  thought  pos- 
sible to  combine  freedom  and  order  by  copying,  with  very  slight 
changes,  the  British  constitution.  From  a  longing  for  liberty, 
combined  with  a  loathing  of  the  French  experiments  in  it,  there 
sprang  the  state  of  opinion  in  which  the  constitutional  move- 
ments of  the  Continent  had  their  birth.  The  British  political 
model  was  followed  by  France,  by  Spain  and  Portugal,  and  by 
Holland  and  Belgium,  combined  in  the  kingdom  of  the  Nether- 
lands ;  and,  after  a  long  interval,  by  Germany,  Italy,  and  Austria. 
The  principle  of  modern  popular  government  was  thus  affirmed 
less  than  two  centuries  ago,  and  the  practical  appHcation  of  that 
principle  outside  these  islands  and  their  dependencies  is  not  quite 
a  century  old.  What  has  been  the  political  history  of  the  com- 
monwealths in  which  this  principle  has  been  carried  out  in  vari- 
ous degrees  ?  The  inquiry  is  obviously  one  of  much  importance 
and  interest ;  but,  though  the  materials  for  it  are  easily  obtained, 
and  indeed  are  to  a  large  extent  within  the  memory  of  living  men, 
it  is  very  seldom  or  very  imperfectly  prosecuted.  I  undertake 
it  solely  with  the  view  of  ascertaining,  within  reasonable  limits 
of  space,  how  far  actual  experience  countenances  the  common 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      385 

assumption  of  our  day,  that  popular  government  is  likely  to  be 
of  indefinitely  long  duration.  I  will  first  take  France,  which 
began  with  the  imitation  of  the  English,  and  has  ended  with  the 
adoption  of  the  American  model.  Since  the  introduction  of 
pohtical  freedom  into  France,  the  existing  government,  nomi- 
nally clothed  with  all  the  powers  of  the  state,  has  been  three  times 
overturned  by  the  mob  of  Paris,  in  1792,  in  1830,  and  in  1848. 
It  has  been  three  times  overthrown  by  the  Army;  first  in  1797, 
on  the  4th  of  September  (18  Fructidor),  when  the  majority  of  the 
Directors  with  the  help  of  the  soldiery  annulled  the  elections  of 
forty-eight  departments,  and  deported  fifty-six  members  of  the 
two  AssembHes,  condemning  also  to  deportation  two  of  their  own 
colleagues.  The  second  military  revolution  was  effected  by  the 
elder  Bonaparte  on  the  9th  of  November  (18  Brumaire),  1799; 
and  the  third  by  the  younger  Bonaparte,  on  December  2,  185 1. 
The  French  government  has  also  been  three  times  destroyed  by 
foreign  invasion,  in  1814,  1815,  and  1870;  the  invasion  having 
been  in  each  case  provoked  by  French  aggression,  sympathized 
in  by  the  bulk  of  the  French  people.  In  all,  putting  aside  the 
anomalous  period  from  1870  to  1885,  France,  since  she  began  her 
political  experiments,  has  had  forty-four  years  of  liberty  and 
thirty-seven  of  stern  dictatorship.^  But  it  has  to  be  remembered, 
and  it  is  one  of  the  curiosities  of  this  period  of  history,  that  the 
elder  Bourbons,  who  in  practice  gave  very  wide  room  to  political 
freedom,  did  not  expressly  admit  the  modern  theory  of  popular 
government ;  while  the  Bonapartes,  who  proclaimed  the  theory 
without  qualification,  maintained  in  practice  a  rigid  despotism. 
Popular  government  was  introduced  into  Spain  just  when  the 
fortune  of  war  was  declaring  itself  decisively  in  favor  of  Welling- 
ton and  the  English  army.  The  Extraordinary  Cortes  signed 
at  Cadiz  a  constitution,  since  then  famous  in  Spanish  politics 
as  the  constitution  of  181 2,  which  proclaimed  in  its  first  article 
that  sovereignty  resided  in  the  nation.  Ferdinand  VII,  on 
re-entering  Spain  from  France,  repudiated  this  constitution,  de- 

'  I  include  in  the  thirty-seven  years  the  interval  between  September,  1797 
and  November,  1799. 


386  HENRY   SUMNER   MAINE 

nouncing  it  as  Jacobinical ;  and  for  about  six  years  he  rei  gned 
as  absolutely  as  any  of  his  forefathers.  But  in  1820  General 
Riego,  who  was  in  command  of  a  large  force  stationed  near  Cadiz, 
headed  a  military  insurrection  in  which  the  mob  joined ;  and  the 
king  submitted  to  the  constitution  of  181 2,  In  1823  the  for- 
eign invader  appeared ;  the  French  armies  entered  Spain  at  the 
instigation  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  and  reestablished  Ferdinand's 
despotism,  which  lasted  till  his  death.  Popular  government 
was,  however,  reintroduced  by  his  widow  as  regent  for  his 
daughter,  no  doubt  for  the  purpose  of  strengthening  Isabella's 
title  to  the  throne  against  her  uncle,  Don  Carlos.  It  is  probably 
unnecessary  to  give  the  subsequent  political  history  of  Spain  in 
any  detail.  There  are  some  places  in  South  America  where  the 
people  date  events,  not  from  the  great  earthquakes,  but  from  the 
years  in  which,  by  a  rare  intermission,  there  is  no  earthquake  at 
all.  On  the  same  principle  we  may  note  that  during  the  nine 
years  following  1845,  and  the  nine  years  following  1857,  there 
was  comparative,  though  not  complete,  freedom  from  military 
insurrection  in  Spain.  As  to  the  residue  of  her  political  history, 
my  calculation  is  that  between  the  first  establishment  of  popular 
government  in  18 12  and  the  accession  of  the  present  king,  there 
have  been  forty  military  risings  of  a  serious  nature,  in  most  of 
which  the  mob  took  part.  Nine  of  them  were  perfectly  success- 
ful, either  overthrowing  the  constitution  for  the  time  being,  or 
reversing  the  principles  on  which  it  was  administered.  I  need 
hardly  say  that  both  the  queen  regent,  Christina,  and  her 
daughter  Isabella,  were  driven  out  of  Spain  by  the  army  or  the 
fleet,  with  the  help  of  the  mob ;  and  that  the  present  king,  Al- 
fonso, was  placed  on  the  throne  through  a  military  pronuncia- 
mento  at  the  end  of  1874.  It  is  generally  thought  that  he  owes 
his  retention  of  it  since  1875  to  statesmanship  of  a  novel  kind. 
As  soon  as  he  has  assured  himself  that  the  army  is  in  earnest,  he 
changes  his  ministers. 

The  real  beginning  of  popular  or  parliamentary  government  in 
Germany  and  the  Austrian  dominions,  other  than  Hungary,  can- 
not be  placed  earlier  than  1848.     The  interest  of  German  politics 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      387 

from  181 5  to  that  year  consists  in  the  complaints,  ever  growing 
fainter,  of  the  German  communities  who  sought  to  compel  the 
princes  to  redeem  their  promises  of  constitutions  made  during 
the  War  of  Independence,  and  of  the  efforts  of  the  princes  to  es- 
cape or  evade  their  pledges.  Francis  the  Second  expressed  the 
prevailing  feeling  in  his  own  way  when  he  said  to  the  Hungarian 
Diet,  "totus  mundus  stultizat,  et  vult  habere  novas  constitu- 
tiones."  ^  With  some  exceptions  in  the  smaller  states  there  were 
no  parliamentary  institutions  in  Germany  till  the  King  of  Prussia 
conceded,  just  before  1848,  the  singular  form  of  constitutional 
government  which  did  not  survive  that  year.  But  as  soon  as  the 
mob  of  Paris  had  torn  up  the  French  constitutional  charter, 
and  expelled  the  constitutional  king,  mobs,  with  their  usual 
accompaniment,  the  army,  began  to  influence  German  and  even 
Austrian  politics.  National  assemblies,  on  the  French  pattern, 
were  called  together  at  Berlin,  at  Vienna,  and  at  Frankfort.  All 
of  them  were  dispersed  in  about  a  year,  and  directly  or  indirectly 
by  the  army.  The  more  recent  German  and  Austrian  consti- 
tutions are  all  of  royal  origin.  Taking  Europe  as  a  whole,  the 
most  durably  successful  experiments  in  popular  government  have 
been  made  either  in  small  States,  too  weak  for  foreign  war,  such 
as  Holland  and  Belgium,  or  in  countries  like  the  Scandinavian 
states,  where  there  was  an  old  tradition  of  political  freedom. 
The  ancient  Hungarian  constitution  has  been  too  much  affected 
by  civil  war  for  any  assertion  about  it  to  be  safe.  Portugal,  for 
a  while  scarcely  less  troubled  than  Spain  by  military  insurrection, 
has  been  free  from  it  of  late ;  and  Greece  has  had  the  dynasty  of 
her  kings  once  changed  by  revolution. 

If  we  look  outside  Europe  and  beyond  the  circle  of  British  de- 
pendencies, the  phenomena  are  much  the  same.  The  Civil  War 
of  1861-1865,  in  the  United  States,  was  as  much  a  war  of  revolu- 
tion as  the  war  of  1 775-1782.  It  was  a  war  carried  on  by  the 
adherents  of  one  set  of  principles  and  one  construction  of  the 
constitution  against  the  adherents  of  another  body  of  principles 

1  The  whole  world  is  becoming  foolish,  and  wishes  to  have  new  constitu- 
tions. —  Editors. 


388  HENRY   SUMNER   MAINE 

and  another  constitutional  doctrine.  It  would  be  absurd,  how- 
ever, to  deny  the  relative  stability  of  the  government  of  the 
United  States,  which  is  a  political  fact  of  the  first  importance; 
but  the  inferences  which  might  be  drawn  from  it  are  much  weak- 
ened, if  not  destroyed,  by  the  remarkable  spectacle  furnished  by 
the  numerous  republics  set  up  from  the  Mexican  border  line  to 
the  Straits  of  Magellan.  It  would  take  many  of  these  pages  even 
to  summarize  the  whole  political  history  of  the  Spanish- American 
communities.  There  have  been  entire  periods  of  years  during 
which  some  of  them  have  been  disputed  between  the  multitude 
and  the  military,  and  again  when  tyrants,  as  brutal  as  Caligula  or 
Commodus,  reigned  over  them  like  a  Roman  Emperor  in  the 
name  of  the  Roman  people.  It  may  be  enough  to  say  of  one 
of  them,  Bolivia,  which  was  recently  heard  of  through  her  part 
in  the  war  on  the  Pacific  coast,  that  out  of  fourteen  presidents  of 
the  Bolivian  republic  thirteen  have  died  assassinated  or  in 
exile. ^  There  is  one  partial  explanation  of  the  inattention  of 
English  and  European  politicians  to  a  most  striking,  instructive, 
and  uniform  body  of  facts :  Spanish  —  though,  next  to  English, 
it  is  the  most  widely  diffused  language  of  the  civilized  world  — • 
is  little  read  or  spoken  in  England,  France,  or  Germany.  There 
are,  however,  other  theories  to  account  for  the  universal  and 
scarcely  intermitted  political  confusion  which  at  times  has 
reigned  in  all  Central  and  South  America,  save  Chile  and  the 
Brazilian  Empire.  It  is  said  that  the  people  are  to  a  great  extent 
of  Indian  blood,  and  that  they  have  been  trained  in  Roman  Ca- 
tholicism. Such  arguments  would  be  intelligible  if  they  were  used 
hy  persons  who  maintained  that  a  highly  special  and  exceptional 
political  education  is  essential  to  the  successful  practice  of  popu- 
lar government ;  but  they  proceed  from  those  who  believe  that 
there  is  at  least  a  strong  presumption  in  favor  of  democratic 
institutions  everywhere.  And  as  regards  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church,  it  should  at  least  be  remembered  that,  whatever  else  it 
may  be,  it  is  a  great  school  of  equality. 

I  have  now  given  shortly  the  actual  history  of  popular  govern- 
^  Arana,  Guerre  du  Pacifique,  vol.  vii,  p.  33. 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF  POPULAR  GOVERNMENT  389 

ment  since  it  was  introduced,  in  its  modem  shape,  into  the  civ- 
ilized world.  I  state  the  facts,  as  matter  neither  for  congratu- 
lation nor  for  lamentation,  but  simply  as  materials  for  opinion. 
It  is  manifest  that,  so  far  as  they  go,  they  do  little  to  support  the 
assumption  that  popular  government  has  an  indefinitely  long 
future  before  it.  Experience  rather  tends  to  show  that  it  is 
characterized  by  great  fragility,  and  that,  since  its  appearance, 
all  forms  of  government  have  become  more  insecure  than  they 
were  before.  The  true  reason  why  the  extremely  accessible  facts 
which  I  have  noticed  are  so  seldom  observed  and  put  together  is 
that  the  enthusiasts  for  popular  government,  particularly  when 
it  reposes  on  a  wide  basis  of  suffrage,  are  actuated  by  much  the 
same  spirit  as  the  zealots  of  Legitimism.  They  assume  their 
principle  to  have  a  sanction  antecedent  to  fact.  It  is  not  thought 
to  be  in  any  way  invalidated  by  practical  violations  of  it,  which 
merely  constitute  so  many  sins  the  more  against  imprescriptable 
right.  The  convinced  partisans  of  democracy  care  little  for  in- 
stances which  show  democratic  governments  to  be  unstable. 
These  are  merely  isolated  triumphs  of  the  principle  of  evil.  But 
the  conclusion  of  the  sober  student  of  history  will  not  be  of  this 
kind.  He  will  rather  note  it  as  a  fact,  to  be  considered  in  the 
most  serious  spirit,  that  since  the  century  during  which  the  Ro- 
man emperors  were  at  the  mercy  of  the  praetorian  soldiery,  there 
has  been  no  such  insecurity  of  government  as  the  world  has  seen 
since  rulers  become  delegates  of  the  community. 

Is  it  possible  to  assign  any  reasons  for  this  singular  modern  loss 
of  political  equilibrium  ?  I  think  that  it  is  possible  to  a  certain 
extent.  It  may  be  observed  that  two  separate  national  senti- 
ments have  been  acting  on  western  Europe  since  the  beginning 
of  the  present  century.  To  call  them  by  names  given  to  them 
by  those  who  dislike  them,  one  is  Imperialism  and  the  other  is 
Radicalism.  They  are  not  in  the  least  purely  British  forms  of 
opinion,  but  are  coextensive  with  civilization.  Almost  all  men 
in  our  day  are  anxious  that  their  country  should  be  respected 
of  all  and  dependent  on  none,  that  it  should  enjoy  greatness  and 
perhaps  ascendancy ;  and  thi  s  passion  for  national  dignity  has  gone 


390  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

hand  in  hand  with  the  desire  of  the  many,  ever  more  and  more 
acquiesced  in  by  the  few,  to  have  a  share  of  political  power  under 
the  name  of  liberty,  and  to  govern  by  rulers  who  are  their  dele- 
gates. The  two  newest  and  most  striking  of  political  creations 
in  Europe,  the  German  Empire  and  the  Italian  Kingdom,  are 
joint  products  of  these  forces.  But  for  the  first  of  these  coveted 
objects,  imperial  rank,  great  armies  and  fleets,  are  indispensable, 
and  it  becomes  ever  more  a  necessity  that  the  men  under  arms 
should  be  nearly  coextensive  with  the  whole  of  the  males  in  the 
flower  of  life.  It  is  yet  to  be  seen  how  far  great  armies  are  consist- 
ent with  popular  government  resting  on  a  wide  suffrage.  No  two 
organizations  can  be  more  opposed  to  one  another  than  an  army 
scientifically  disciplined  and  equipped,  and  a  nation  democrati- 
cally governed.  The  great  military  virtue  is  obedience;  the 
great  military  sin  is  slackness  in  obeying.  It  is  forbidden  to 
decline  to  carry  out  orders,  even  with  the  clearest  conviction  of 
their  inexpediency.  But  the  chief  democratic  right  is  the  right 
to  censure  superiors;  public  opinion,  which  means  censure  as 
well  as  praise,  is  the  motive  force  of  democratic  societies.  The 
maxims  of  the  two  systems  flatly  contradict  one  another,  and  the 
man  who  would  loyally  obey  both  finds  his  moral  constitution 
cut  into  two  halves.  It  has  been  found  by  recent  experience  that 
the  more  popular  the  civil  institutions,  the  harder  it  is  to  keep 
the  army  from  meddling  with  politics.  Military  insurrections 
are  made  by  ofl&cers,  but  not  before  every  soldier  has  discovered 
that  the  share  of  power  which  belongs  to  him  as  a  unit  in  a  regi- 
ment is  more  valuable  than  his  fragment  of  power  as  a  unit  in  a 
constituency.  Military  revolts  are  of  universal  occurrence ;  but 
far  the  largest  number  have  occurred  in  Spain  and  the  Spanish- 
speaking  countries.  There  have  been  ingenious  explanations 
of  the  phenomenon,  but  the  manifest  explanation  is  habit.  An 
army  which  has  once  interfered  with  politics  is  under  a  strong 
temptation  to  interfere  again.  It  is  a  far  easier  and  far  more 
effective  way  of  causing  an  opinion  to  prevail  than  going  to  a 
ballot  box,  and  far  more  profitable  to  the  leaders.  I  may  add 
that,  violent  as  is  the  improbabihty  of  military  interference  in  some 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      391 

countries,  there  is  probably  no  country  except  the  United  States 
in  which  the  army  could  not  control  the  government,  if  it  were 
of  one  mind  and  if  it  retained  its  miHtary  material. 

Popular  governments  have  been  repeatedly  overturned  by  the 
army  and  the  mob  in  combination ;  but  on  the  whole  the  violent 
destruction  of  these  governments  in  their  more  extreme  forms 
has  been  effected  by  the  army,  while  in  their  more  moderate 
shapes  they  have  had  the  mob  for  their  principal  assailant.  It 
is  to  be  observed  that  in  recent  times  mobs  have  materially 
changed  both  their  character  and  their  method  of  attack.  A 
mob  was  once  a  portion  of  society  in  a  state  of  dissolution,  a  col- 
lection of  people  who  for  the  time  had  broken  loose  from  the  ties 
which  bind  society  together.  It  may  have  had  a  vague  prefer- 
ence for  some  political  or  religious  cause,  but  the  spirit  which 
animated  it  was  mainly  one  of  mischief,  or  of  disorder,  or  of  panic. 
But  mobs  have  now  come  more  and  more  to  be  the  organs  of 
definite  opinions.  Spanish  mobs  have  impartially  worn  all  colors ; 
but  the  French  mob  which  overthrew  the  government  of  the  elder 
Bourbons  in  1 830,  while  it  had  a  distinct  political  object  initswish 
to  defeat  the  aggressive  measures  of  the  king,  had  a  further  bias 
towards  Ultra-Radicalism  or  RepubUcanism,  which  showed  itself 
strongly  in  the  insurrectionary  movements  that  followed  the  ac- 
cession of  Louis  Philippe  to  the  throne.  The  mob,  which  in  1848 
overturned  the  government  of  the  younger  Bourbons,  aimed  at 
establishing  a  repubhc,  but  it  had  also  a  leaning  to  socialism ; 
and  the  frightful  popular  insurrection  of  June,  1848,  was  entirely 
sociaHstic.  At  present,  whenever  in  Europe  there  is  a  disturb- 
ance like  those  created  by  the  old  mobs,  it  is  in  the  interest  of  the 
parties  which  style  themselves  Irreconcilable,  and  which  refuse 
to  submit  their  opinions  to  the  arbitration  of  any  governments, 
however  wide  be  the  popular  suffrage  on  which  they  are  based. 
But  besides  their  character,  mobs  have  changed  their  armament. 
They  formerly  wrought  destruction  by  the  undisciplined  force 
of  sheer  numbers ;  but  the  mob  of  Paris,  the  most  successful  of 
all  mobs,  owed  its  success  to  the  barricade.  It  has  now  lost  this 
advantage ;  and  a  generation  is  coming  to  maturity,  which  i>er- 


392  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

haps  will  never  have  learned  that  the  Paris  of  to-day  has  been 
entirely  constructed  with  the  view  of  rendering  forever  impos- 
sible the  old  barricade  of  paving  stones  in  the  narrow  streets  of 
the  demolished  city.  Still  more  recently,  however,  the  mob  has 
obtained  new  arms.  During  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  a 
great  part,  perhaps  the  greatest  part,  of  the  inventive  faculties 
of  mankind  has  been  given  to  the  arts  of  destruction ;  and  among 
the  newly  discovered  modes  of  putting  an  end  to  human  Ufe  on  a 
large  scale,  the  most  effective  and  terrible  is  a  manipulation  of 
explosive  compounds  quite  unknown  till  the  other  day.  The 
bomb  of  nitro-glycerine  and  the  parcel  of  dynamite  are  as  char- 
acteristic of  the  new  enemies  of  government  as  their  Irrecon- 
cilable opinions. 

There  can  be  no  more  formidable  symptom  of  our  time,  and 
none  more  menacing  to  popular  government,  than  the  growth 
of  Irreconcilable  bodies  within  the  mass  of  the  population. 
Church  and  State  are  alike  convulsed  by  them ;  but,  in  civil  life, 
Irreconcilables  are  associations  of  men  who  hold  political  opinions 
as  men  once  held  religious  opinions.  They  cling  to  their  creed 
with  the  same  intensity  of  belief,  the  same  immunity  from  doubt, 
the  same  confident  expectation  of  blessedness  to  come  quickly 
which  characterizes  the  disciples  of  an  infant  faith.  They  are 
doubtless  a  product  of  democratic  sentiment;  they  have  bor- 
rowed from  it  its  promise  of  a  new  and  good  time  at  hand ;  but 
they  insist  on  the  immediate  redemption  of  the  pledge,  and  they 
utterly  refuse  to  wait  until  a  popular  majority  gives  effect  to  their 
opinions.  Nor  would  the  vote  of  such  a  majority  have  the  least 
authority  with  them,  if  it  sanctioned  any  departure  from  their 
principles.  It  is  possible,  and  indeed  likely,  that  if  the  Russians 
voted  by  universal  suffrage  to-morrow,  they  would  confirm  the 
imperial  authority  by  enormous  majorities ;  but  not  a  bomb  nor 
an  ounce  of  dynamite  would  be  spared  to  the  reigning  emperor 
by  the  Nihilists.  The  Irreconcilables  are  of  course  at  feud  with 
governments  of  the  older  type,  but  these  governments  make  no 
claim  to  their  support ;  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  a  portion  of 
the  governing  body  of  democratic  commonwealths,  and  from 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF  POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      393 

this  vantage  ground  they  are  able  to  inflict  deadly  injury  on 
popular  government.  There  is  in  reality  no  closer  analogy  than 
between  these  infant  political  creeds  and  the  belligerent  religions 
which  are  constantly  springing  up  even  now  in  parts  of  the 
world ;  for  instance,  that  of  the  Tae-pings  in  China.  Even  in 
our  own  country  we  may  observe  that  the  earliest  political  Ir- 
reconcilables  were  religious  or  semireligious  zealots.  Such  were 
both  the  Independents  and  the  Jacobites.  Cromwell,  who  for 
many  striking  reasons  might  have  been  a  personage  of  a  much 
later  age,  was  an  Irreconcilable  at  the  head  of  an  army ;  and  we 
all  know  what  he  thought  of  the  Parliament  which  anticipated 
the  democratic  assemblies  of  our  day. 

Of  all  modern  Irreconcilables,  the  Nationalists  appear  to  be 
the  most  impracticable,  and  of  all  governments,  popular  govern- 
ments seem  least  likely  to  cope  with  them  successfully.     Nobody 
can  say  exactly  what  Nationalism  is,  and  indeed  the  dangerous- 
ness  of  the  theory  arises  from  its  vagueness.     It  seems  full  of  the 
seeds  of  future  civil  convulsion.     As  it  is  sometimes  put,  it  ap- 
pears to  assume  that  men  of  one  particular  race  suffer  injustice 
if  they  are  placed  under  the  same  political  institutions  with  men 
of  another  race.    But  Race  is  quite  as  ambiguous  a  term  as  Na- 
tionality.    The  earlier  philologists  had  certainly  supposed  that 
the  branches  of  mankind  speaking  languages  of  the  same  stock 
were  somehow  connected  by  blood ;  but  no  scholar  now  believes 
that  this  is  more  than  approximately  true,  for  conquest,  contact, 
and  the  ascendancy  of  a  particular  literate  class,  have  quite  as 
much  to  do  with  community  of  language  as  common  descent. 
Moreover,  several  of  the  communities  claiming  the  benefit  of  the 
new  theory  are  certainly  not  entitled  to  it.     The  Irish  are  an 
extremely  mixed  race,  and  it  is  only  by  a  perversion  of  language 
that  the  Italians  can  be  called  a  race  at  all.     The  fact  is  that  any 
portion  of  a  political  society,  which  has  had  a  somewhat  different 
history  from  the  rest  of  the  parts,  can  take  advantage  of  the 
theory  and  claim  independence,  and  can  thus  threaten  the  entire 
society  with  dismemberment.     Where  royal  authority  survives 
in  any  vigor,  it  can  to  a  certain  extent  deal  with  these  demands. 


394  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

Almost  all  the  civilized  states  derive  their  national  unitv  from 
common  subjection,  past  or  present,  to  royal  power ;  the  Ameri- 
cans of  the  United  States,  for  example,  are  a  nation  because  they 
once  obeyed  a  king.  Hence  too  it  is  that  such  a  miscellany  of 
races  as  those  which  make  up  the  Austro-Hungarian  Monarchy 
can  be  held  together,  at  all  events  temporarily,  by  the  authority 
of  the  emperor-king.  But  democracies  are  quite  paralyzed 
by  the  plea  of  Nationality.  There  is  no  more  effective  way  of 
attacking  them  than  by  admitting  the  right  of  the  majority  to 
govern,  but  denying  that  the  majority  so  entitled  is  the  particular 
majority  which  claims  the  right. 

The  difficulties  of  popular  government,  which  arise  from  the 
modern  military  spirit  and  from  the  modern  growth  of  Irrecon- 
cilable parties,  could  not  perhaps  have  been  determined  without 
actual  experience.  But  there  are  other  difficulties  which  might 
have  been  divined,  because  they  proceed  from  the  inherent  na- 
ture of  democracy.  In  stating  some  of  them,  I  will  endeavor  to 
avoid  those  which  are  suggested  by  mere  dislike  or  alarm ;  those 
which  I  propose  to  specify  were  in  reality  noted  more  than  two 
centuries  ago  by  the  powerful  intellect  of  Hobbes,  and  it  will  be 
seen  what  light  is  thrown  on  some  political  phenomena  of  our 
day  by  his  searching  analysis. 

Pohtical  liberty,  said  Hobbes,  is  political  power.  When  a  man 
burns  to  be  free,  he  is  not  longing  for  the  "  desolate  freedom  of  the 
wild  ass;"  what  he  wants  is  a  share  of  political  government. 
But,  in  wide  democracies,  political  power  is  minced  into  morsels, 
and  each  man's  portion  of  it  is  almost  infinitesimally  small.  One 
of  the  first  results  of  this  political  comminution  is  described  by 
Mr.  Justice  Stephen  in  a  work^  of  earlier  date  than  that  which  I 
have  quoted  above.  It  is  that  two  of  the  historical  watchwords 
of  Democracy  exclude  one  another,  and  that,  where  there  is 
pohtical  Liberty,  there  can  be  no  Equality. 

"  The  man  who  can  sweep  the  greatest  number  of  fragments 
of  political  power  into  one  heap  will  govern  the  rest.  The 
strongest  man  in  one  form  or  another  will  always  rule.     If  the 

'  Liberty,  Fraternity,  and  Equality,  by  Sir  James  Stephen,  1873,  P-  239 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT     395 

government  is  a  military  one,  the  qualities  which  make  a  man 
a  great  soldier  will  make  him  a  ruler.  If  the  government  is  a 
monarchy,  the  qualities  which  kings  value  in  counselors,  in 
administrators,  in  generals,  will  give  power.  In  a  pure  democ- 
racy, the  ruling  men  will  be  the  wire-pullers  and  their  friends ; 
but  they  will  be  no  more  on  an  equahty  with  the  people  than 
soldiers  or  ministers  of  state  are  on  an  equality  with  the  sub- 
jects of  a  monarchy.  ...  In  some  ages,  a  powerful  character, 
in  others  cunning,  in  others  power  of  transacting  business,  in 
others  eloquence,  in  others  a  good  hold  upon  commonplaces 
and  a  facility  in  applying  them  to  practical  purposes,  will 
enable  a  man  to  climb  on  his  neighbors'  shoulders  and  direct 
them  this  way  or  that ;  but  under  all  circumstances  the  rank 
and  file  are  directed  by  leaders  of  one  kind  or  another  who  get 
the  command  of  their  collective  force." 

There  is  no  doubt  that,  in  popular  governments  resting  on  a 
wide  suffrage,  either  without  an  army  or  having  Uttle  reason  to 
fear  it,  the  leader,  whether  or  not  he  be  cunning,  or  eloquent,  or 
well  provided  with  commonplaces,  will  be  the  wire-puller.  The 
process  of  cutting  up  political  power  into  petty  fragments  has  in 
him  its  most  remarkable  product.  The  morsels  of  power  are  so 
small  that  men,  if  left  to  themselves,  would  not  care  to  employ 
them.  In  England,  they  would  be  largely  sold,  if  the  law  per- 
mitted it ;  in  the  United  States  they  are  extensively  sold  in  spite 
of  the  law ;  and  in  France,  and  to  a  less  extent  in  England,  the 
number  of  "abstentions"  shows  the  small  value  attributed  to 
votes.  But  the  political  chiffonier^  who  collects  and  utili-zes  the 
fragments  is  the  wire-puller.  I  think,  however,  that  it  is  too 
much  the  habit  in  this  country  to  describe  him  as  a  mere  organ- 
izer, contriver,  and  manager.  The  particular  mechanism  which 
he  constructs  is  no  doubt  of  much  importance.  The  form  of 
this  mechanism  recently  erected  in  this  country  has  a  close  re- 
semblance to  the  system  of  the  Wesleyan  Methodists ;  one  sys- 
tem, however,  exists  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  spirit  of 
grace  aflame,  the  other  for  maintaining  the  spirit  of  party  at  a 

^  Ragman.  —  Editors. 


396  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

white  heat.  The  wire-puller  is  not  intelligible  unless  we  take 
into  account  one  of  the  strongest  forces  acting  on  human  nature 
—  party  feeling.  Party  feeling  is  probably  far  more  a  survival  of 
the  primitive  combativeness  of  mankind  than  a  consequence  of 
conscious  intellectual  differences  between  man  and  man.  It  is 
essentially  the  same  sentiment  which  in  certain  states  of  society 
leads  to  civil,  intertribal,  or  international  war ;  and  it  is  as  uni- 
versal as  humanity.  It  is  better  studied  in  its  more  irrational 
manifestations  than  in  those  to  which  we  are  accustomed.  It  is 
said  that  Australian  savages  will  travel  half  over  the  Australian 
continent  to  take  in  a  fight  the  side  of  combatants  who  wear  the 
same  totem  as  themselves.  Two  Irish  factions  who  broke  one 
another's  heads  over  the  whole  island  are  said  to  have  originated 
in  a  quarrel  about  the  color  of  a  cow.  In  southern  India  a 
series  of  dangerous  riots  are  constantly  arising  through  the  ri- 
valry of  parties  who  know  no  more  of  one  another  than  that  some 
of  them  belong  to  the  party  of  the  right  hand  and  others  to  that 
of  the  left  hand.  Once  a  year,  large  numbers  of  EngUsh  ladies 
and  gentlemen,  who  have  no  serious  reason  for  preferring  one 
university  to  the  other,  wear  dark  or  light  blue  colors  to  signify 
good  wishes  for  the  success  of  Oxford  or  Cambridge  in  a  cricket 
match  or  boat  race.  Party  differences,  properly  so-called,  are 
supposed  to  indicate  intellectual,  or  moral,  or  historical  prefer- 
ences ;  but  these  go  a  very  little  way  down  into  the  population ; 
and  by  the  bulk  of  partisans  they  are  hardly  understood  and  soon 
forgotten.  "Guelf  "  and  "Ghibelline"  had  once  a  meaning,  but 
men  were  under  perpetual  banishment  from  their  native  land  for 
belonging  to  one  or  other  of  these  parties  long  after  nobody 
knew  in  what  the  difference  consisted.  Some  men  are  Tories  or 
Whigs  by  conviction ;  but  thousands  upon  thousands  of  electors 
vote  simply  for  yellow,  blue,  or  purple,  caught  at  most  by  the 
appeals  of  some  popular  orator. 

It  is  through  this  great  natural  tendency  to  take  sides  that  the 
wire-puller  works.  Without  it  he  would  be  powerless.  His 
business  is  to  fan  its  flame ;  to  keep  it  constantly  acting  upon 
the  man  who  has  once  declared  himself  a  partisan;    to  make 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      397 

escape  from  it  difficult  and  distasteful.     His  ?rt  is  that  of  the 
nonconformist  preacher,  who   gave   importance  to  a  body  of 
commonplace  religionists  by  persuading  them  to  wear  a  uniform 
and  take  a  military  title,  or  of  the  man  who  made  the  success 
of  a  temperance  society  by  prevailing  on  its  members  to  wear 
always  and  openly  a  blue  ribbon.     In  the  long  run,  these  con- 
trivances cannot  be  confined  to  any  one  party,  and  their  effects 
on  all  parties  and  their  leaders,  and  on  the  whole  ruling  de- 
mocracy, must  be  in  the  highest  degree  serious  and  lasting.    The 
first  of  these  effects  will  be,  I  think,  to  make  all  parties  very  like 
one  another,  and  indeed  in  the  end  almost  indistinguishable, 
however  leaders  may  quarrel  and  partisan  hate  partisan.     In 
the  next  place,  each  party  will  probably  become  more  and  more 
homogeneous;    and  the  opinions  it  professes,  and  the  policy 
which  is  the  outcome  of  those  opinions,  will  less  and  less  reflect 
the  individual  mind  of  any  leader,  but  only  the  ideas  which  seem 
to  that  mind  to  be  most  likely  to  win  favor  with  the  greatest 
number  of  supporters.     Lastly,  the  wire-pulling  system,  when 
fully  developed,  will  infallibly  lead  to  the  constant  enlargement 
of  the  area  of  suffrage.     What  is  called  universal  suffrage  has 
greatly  declined  in  the  estimation,  not  only  of  philosophers 
who  follow  Bentham,  but  of  the  a  priori  theorists  who  assumed 
that  it  was  the  inseparable  accompaniment  of  a  republic,  but 
who  found  that  in  practice  it  was  the  natural  basis  of  a  tyranny. 
But  extensions  of  the  suffrage,  though  no  longer  believed  to  be 
good  in  themselves,  have  now  a  permanent  place  in  the  armory 
of  parties,  and  are  sure  to  be  a  favorite  weapon  of  the  wire- 
puller.      The  Athenian  statesmen  who,  worsted  in  a  quarrel 
of   aristocratic   cliques,    "took   the   people   into   partnership," 
have  a  close  parallel  in  the  modern  politicians  who  introduce 
household  suffrage  into  towns  to  "dish"  one  side,  and  into 
counties  to  "dish"  the  other. 

Let  us  now  suppose  the  competition  of  parties,  stimulated  to 
the  utmost  by  the  modern  contrivances  of  the  wire-puller,  to 
have  produced  an  electoral  system  under  which  every  adult 
male  has  a  vote,   and  perhaps  every  adult  female.     Let  us 


398  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

assume  that  the  new  machinery  has  extracted  a  vote  from  every 
one  of  these  electors.     How  is  the  result  to  be  expressed  ?     It  is, 
that  the  average  opinion  of  a  great  multitude  has  been  obtained, 
and  that  this  average  opinion  becomes  the  basis  and  standard  of 
all  government  and  law.     There  is  hardly  any  experience  of  the 
way  in  which  such  a  system  would  work,  except  in  the  eyes  of 
those  who  believe  that  history  began  since  their  own  birth.     The 
universal  suffrage  of  white  males  in  the  United  States  is  about 
fifty  years  old ;  that  of  white  and  black  is  less  than  twenty.     The 
French  threw  away  universal  suffrage  after  the  Reign  of  Terror ; 
it  was  twice  revived  in  France,  that  the  Napoleonic  tyranny 
might  be  founded  on  it ;   and  it  was  introduced  into  Germany, 
that  the  personal  power  of   Prince  Bismarck    might  be   con- 
firmed.    But  one  of  the  strangest  of  vulgar  ideas  is  that  a  very 
wide  suffrage  could  or  would  promote  progress,  new  ideas,  new 
discoveries  and  inventions,  new  arts  of  life.     Such  a  suffrage  is 
commonly  associated  with  Radicalism;   and  no  doubt  amid  its 
most   certain   effects   would   be   the   extensive   destruction   of 
existing  institutions ;  but  the  chances  are  that,  in  the  long  run, 
it  would  produce  a  mischievous  form  of  Conservatism,  and  drug 
society  with  a  potion  compared  with  which  Eldonine  would  be 
a   salutary   draught.     For   to   what   end,   towards  what  ideal 
state,  is  the  process  of  stamping  upon  law  the  average  opinion 
of   an   entire    commimity   directed  ?     The   end   arrived   at   is 
identical   with   that   of   the   Roman    Catholic   Church,   which 
attributes  a  similar  sacredness  to  the  average  opinion  of  the 
Christian  world.      "Quod  semper,  quod  ubique,  quod  ab  omni- 
bus," ^  was  the  canon  of  Vincent  of  Lerins.     "  Securus  judicat 
orbis  terrarum,"  ^  were  the  words  which  rang  in  the  ears  of 
Newman  and  produced  such  marvelous  effects  on  him.     But  did 
any  one  in  his  senses  ever  suppose  that  these  were  maxims  of 
progress?    The  principles  of  legislation  at  which   they  point 
would  probably  put  an  end  to  all  social  and  political  activities, 
and  arrest  everything  which  has  ever  been  associated  with  Liber- 

1  What  is  approved  always,  everywhere,  and  by  all.  —  Editors. 
^  The  world  is  secure  in  its  judgment.  — Editors. 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF  POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      399 

alism.  A  moment's  reflection  will  satisfy  any  competently 
instructed  person  that  this  is  not  too  broad  a  proposition.  Let 
him  turn  over  in  his  mind  the  great  epochs  of  scientific  invention 
and  social  change  during  the  last  two  centuries,  and  consider  what 
would  have  occurred  if  universal  suffrage  had  been  established 
at  any  one  of  them.  Universal  suffrage,  which  to-day  excludes 
Free  Trade  from  the  United  States,  would  certainly  have  pro- 
hibited the  spinning  jenny  and  the  power  loom.  It  would 
certainly  have  forbidden  the  threshing  machine.  It  would  have 
prevented  the  adoption  of  the  Gregorian  calendar;  and  it 
would  have  restored  the  Stuarts.  It  would  have  proscribed  the 
Roman  Catholics  with  the  mob  which  burned  Lord  Mansfield's 
house  and  library  in  1780,  and  it  would  have  proscribed  the  Dis- 
senters with  the  mob  which  burned  Dr.  Priestley's  house  and 
library  in  1791. 

There  are  possibly  many  persons  who,  without  denying  these 
conclusions  in  the  past,  tacitly  assume  that  no  such  mistakes 
will  be  committed  in  the  future,  because  the  community  is 
already  too  enlightened  for  them,  and  will  become  more  en- 
lightened through  popular  education.  But  without  questioning 
the  advantages  of  popular  education  under  certain  aspects,  its 
manifest  tendency  is  to  diffuse  popular  commonplaces,  to  fasten 
them  on  the  mind  at  the  time  when  it  is  most  easily  impressed, 
and  thus  to  stereotype  average  opinion.  It  is  of  course  pos- 
sible that  universal  suffrage  would  not  now  force  on  govern- 
ments the  same  legislation  which  it  would  infallibly  have 
dictated  a  hundred  years  ago;  but  then  we  are  necessarily 
ignorant  of  what  germs  of  social  and  material  improvement 
there  may  be  in  the  womb  of  time,  and  how  far  they  may  con- 
flict with  the  popular  prejudice  which  hereafter  will  be  omnip- 
otent. There  is  in  fact  just  enough  evidence  to  show  that  even 
now  there  is  a  marked  antagonism  between  democratic  opinion 
and  scientific  truth  as  applied  to  human  societies.  The  central 
seat  in  all  political  economy  was  from  the  first  occupied  by  the 
theory  of  population.  This  theory  has  now  been  generalized  by 
Mr.  Darwin  and  his  followers,  and,  stated  as  the  principle  of 


400  HENRY   SUMNER  MAINE 

the  survival  of  the  fittest,  it  has  become  the  central  truth  of  all 
biological  science.  Yet  it  is  evidently  disliked  by  the  multitude, 
and  thrust  into  the  background  by  those  whom  the  multitude 
permits  to  lead  it.  It  has  long  been  intensely  unpopular  in 
France  and  the  continent  of  Europe;  and,  among  ourselves, 
proposals  for  recognizing  it  through  the  relief  of  distress  by 
emigration  are  visibly  being  supplanted  by  schemes  founded  on 
the  assumption  that,  through  legislative  experiments  on  society, 
a  given  space  of  land  may  always  be  made  to  support  in  com- 
fort the  population  which  from  historical  causes  has  come  to  be 
settled  on  it. 

It  is  perhaps  hoped  that  this  opposition  between  democracy 
and  science,  which  certainly  does  not  promise  much  for  the 
longevity  of  popular  government,  may  be  neutralized  by  the 
ascendancy  of  instructed  leaders.  Possibly  the  proposition 
would  not  be  very  unsafe,  that  he  who  calls  himself  a  friend  of 
democracy  because  he  believes  that  it  will  be  always  under  wise 
guidance  is  in  reality,  whether  he  knows  it  or  not,  an  enemy  of 
democracy.  But  at  all  events  the  signs  of  our  times  are  not  at 
all  of  favorable  augury  for  the  future  direction  of  great  multi- 
tudes by  statesmen  wiser  than  themselves.  The  relation  of 
political  leaders  to  political  followers  seems  to  me  to  be  under- 
going a  twofold  change.  The  leaders  may  be  as  able  and  elo- 
quent as  ever,  and  some  of  them  certainly  appear  to  have  an 
unprecedentedly  "good  hold  upon  commonplaces,  and  a  faciHty 
in  applying  them ; "  but  they  are  manifestly  listening  nervously 
at  one  end  of  a  speaking  tube  which  receives  at  its  other  end 
the  suggestions  of  a  lower  intelligence.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
followers,  who  are  really  the  rulers,  are  manifestly  becoming 
impatient  of  the  hesitations  of  their  nominal  chiefs,  and  the 
wrangling  of  their  representatives.  I  am  very  desirous  of 
keeping  aloof  from  questions  disputed  between  the  two  great 
English  parties ;  but  it  certainly  seems  to  me  that  all  over  Con- 
tinental Europe,  and  to  some  extent  in  the  United  States,  parlia- 
mentary debates  are  becoming  ever  more  formal  and  perfunc- 
tory, they  are  more  and  more  liable  to  being  peremptorily  cut 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      401 

short,  and  the  true  springs  of  policy  are  more  and  more  Umited 
to  clubs  and  associations  deep  below  the  level  of  the  highest 
education  and  experience.  There  is  one  state  or  group  of.  states, 
whose  political  condition  deserves  particular  attention.  This  is 
Switzerland,  a  country  to  which  the  student  of  politics  may 
always  look  with  advantage  for  the  latest  forms  and  results  of 
democratic  experiment.  About  forty  years  ago,  just  when  Mr. 
Grote  was  giving  to  the  world  the  earliest  volumes  of  his 
History  of  Greece,  he  pubHshed  Seven  Letters  on  the  Recent 
Politics  of  Switzerland,  explaining  that  his  interest  in  the  Swiss 
cantons  arose  from  their  presenting  "a  certain  analogy  nowhere 
else  to  be  found  in  Europe"  to  the  ancient  Greek  states.  Now, 
if  Grote  had  one  object  more  than  another  at  heart  in  writing  his 
history,  it  was  to  show,  by  the  example  of  the  Athenian  de- 
mocracy, that  wide  popular  governments,  so  far  from  meriting 
the  reproach  of  fickleness,  are  sometimes  characterized  by  the 
utmost  tenacity  of  attachment,  and  will  follow  the  counsels 
of  a  wise  leader,  like  Pericles,  at  the  cost  of  any  amount  of  suffer- 
ing, and  may  even  be  led  by  an  unwise  leader,  hke  Nicias,  to  the 
very  verge  of  destruction.  But  he  had  the  acuteness  to  discern 
in  Switzerland  the  particular  democratic  institution  which  was 
likely  to  tempt  democracies  into  dispensing  with  prudent  and 
independent  direction.  He  speaks  with  the  strongest  disap- 
proval of  a  provision  in  the  constitution  of  Lucerne,  by  which 
all  laws  passed  by  the  Legislative  Council  were  to  be  submitted 
for  veto  or  sanction  to  the  vote  of  the  people  throughout  the 
canton.  This  was  originally  a  contrivance  of  the  ultra-CathoUc 
party,  and  was  intended  to  neutralize  the  opinions  of  the  Catholic 
Liberals  by  bringing  to  bear  on  them  the  average  opinion  of  the 
whole  cantonal  population.  A  year  after  Mr.  Grote  had  pub- 
lished his  Seven  Letters,  the  French  Revolution  of  1848  occurred, 
and  three  years  later,  the  violent  overthrow  of  the  democratic 
institutions  established  by  the  French  National  Assembly  was 
consecrated  by  the  very  method  of  voting  which  he  had  con- 
demned, under  the  name  of  the  Plebiscite.  The  arguments  of 
the   French  Liberal  party  against   the   Plebiscite,  during  the 


402  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

twenty  years  of  stern  despotism  which  it  entailed  upon  France 
have  always  appeared  to  me  to  be  arguments  in  reality  against 
the   very  principle   of  democracy.     After  the   misfortunes  of 
1870,  the  Bonapartes  and  the  Plebiscite  were  alike  involved  in 
the  deepest  unpopularity ;  but  it  seems  impossible  to  doubt  that 
Gambetta,  by  his  agitation  for  the  scrutin  de  liste,  was  attempting 
to  recover  as  much  as  he  could  of  the  plebiscitary  system  of 
voting.     Meantime,  it  has  become,  in  various  shapes,  one  of 
the  most  characteristic  of  Swiss  institutions.     One  article  of  the 
federal  constitution  provides  that,  if  fifty  thousand  Swiss  citi- 
zens, entitled  to  vote,  demand  the  revision  of  the  constitution, 
the  question  whether  the  constitution  be  revised  shall  be  put  to 
the  vote  of  the  people  of  Switzerland,  "aye"  or  "no."    Another 
enacts  that,  on  the  petition  of  thirty  thousand  citizens,  every 
federal    law    and    every  federal  decree,  which   is   not  urgent, 
shall  be  subject  to  the  referendum;  that  is,  it  shall  be  put  to 
the  popular  vote.     These  provisions,  that  when  a  certain  num- 
ber of  voters  demand  a  particular  measure,  or  require  a  further 
sanction  for  a  particular  enactment,  it  shall  be  put  to  the  vote 
of  the  whole  country,  seem  to  me  to  have  a  considerable  future 
before  them  in  democratically  governed  societies.     When  Mr. 
Labouchere  told  the  House  of  Commons  in  1882  that  the  people 
were  tired  of  the  deluge  of  debate,  and  would  some  day  substitute 
for  it  the  direct  consultation  of  the  constituencies,  he  had  more  facts 
to  support  his  opinion  than  his  auditors  were  perhaps  aware  of. 

Here  then  we  have  one  great  inherent  infirmity  of  popular 
governments,  an  infirmity  deducible  from  the  principle  of 
Hobbes,  that  liberty  is  power  cut  into  fragments.  Popular 
governments  can  only  be  worked  by  a  process  which  inciden- 
tally entails  the  further  subdivision  of  the  morsels  of  political 
power;  and  thus  the  tendency  of  these  governments,  as  they 
widen  their  electoral  basis,  is  towards  a  dead  level  of  common- 
place opinion,  which  they  are  forced  to  adopt  as  the  standard 
of  legislation  and  policy.  The  evils  likely  to  be  thus  produced 
are  rather  those  vulgarly  associated  with  ultra-Conservatism 
than  those  of  ultra-Radicalism.      So  far  indeed  as  the  human 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      403 

race  has  experience,  it  is  not  by  political  societies  in  any  way 
resembling  those  now  called  democracies  that  human  improve- 
ment has  been  carried  on.  History,  said  Strauss — and,  con- 
sidering his  actual  part  in  life,  this  is  perhaps  the  last  opinion 
which  might  have  been  expected  from  him  —  History  is  a  sound 
aristocrat.^  There  may  be  oUgarchies  close  enough  and  jealous 
enough  to  stifle  thought  as  completely  as  an  Oriental  despot 
who  is  at  the  same  time  the  pontiff  of  a  religion ;  but  the  prog- 
ress of  mankind  has  hitherto  been  effected  by  the  rise  and  fall  of 
aristocracies,  by  the  formation  of  one  aristocracy  within  another, 
or  by  the  succession  of  one  aristocracy  to  another.  There  have 
been  so-called  democracies  which  have  rendered  services  beyond 
price  to  civilization,  but  they  were  only  peculiar  forms  of  aris- 
tocracy. The  short-lived  Athenian  democracy,  under  whose 
shelter  art,  science,  and  philosophy  shot  so  wonderfully  up- 
wards, was  only  an  aristocracy  which  rose  on  the  ruins  of  one 
much  narrower.  The  splendor  which  attracted  the  original 
genius  of  the  then  civilized  world  to  Athens  was  provided  by  the 
severe  taxation  of  a  thousand  subject  cities;  and  the  skilled 
laborers  who  worked  under  Phidias,  and  who  built  the  Parthe- 
non, were  slaves. 

The  infirmities  of  popular  government,  which  consist  in  its 
occasional  wanton  destructiveness,  have  been  frequently  dwelt 
upon  and  require  less  attention.  In  the  long  run,  the  most 
interesting  question  which  they  suggest  is,  to  what  social  results 
does  the  progressive  overthrow  of  existing  institutions  promise 
to  conduct  mankind?  I  will  again  quote  Mr.  Labouchere, 
who  is  not  the  less  instructive  because  he  may  perhaps  be  sus- 
pected of  taking  a  certain  malicious  pleasure  in  stating  roundly 
what  many  persons  who  employ  the  same  political  watchwords 
as  himself  are  reluctant  to  say  in  public,  and  possibly  shrink 
from  admitting  to  themselves  in  their  own  minds. 

1  The  opinion  of  Strauss  appears  to  be  shared  by  M.  Ernest  Renan.  It 
occurs  twice  in  the  singular  piece  which  he  calls  Caliban.  "Toute  civilisa- 
tion est  d'origine  aristocratique "  (p.  77).  "Toute  civilisation  est  I'ceuvre 
dcs  aristocratcs"  (p.  91). 


404  HENRY  SUMNER  MAINE 

"Democrats  are  told  that  they  are  dreamers,  and  why? 
Because  they  assert  that,  if  power  be  placed  in  the  hands  of 
the  many,  the  many  will  exercise  it  for  their  own  benefit.  Is 
it  not  a  still  wilder  dream  to  suppose  that  the  many  will  in 
future  possess  power,  and  use  it  not  to  secure  what  they  con- 
sider to  be  their  interests,  but  to  serve  those  of  others  ?  .  .  . 
Is  it  imagined  that  artisans  in  our  great  manufacturing  towns 
are  so  satisfied  with  their  present  position  that  they  will  hurry 
to  the  polls,  to  register  their  votes  in  favor  of  a  system  which 
divides  us  socially,  politically,  and  economically,  into  classes, 
and  places  them  at  the  bottom  with  hardly  a  possibility  of 
rising  ?  .  .  .  Is  the  lot  (of  the  agricultural  laborer)  so  happy 
a  one  that  he  will  humbly  and  cheerfully  affix  his  cross  to  the 
name  of  the  man  who  tells  him  that  it  can  never  be  changed 
for  the  better  ?  .  .  .  We  know  that  artisans  and  agricultural 
laborers  will  approach  the  consideration  of  political  and  social 
problems  with  fresh  and  vigorous  minds.  .  .  .  For  the  mo- 
ment, we  demand  the  equalization  of  the  franchise.  .  .  .  Our 
next  demands  will  be  electoral  districts,  cheap  elections,  pay- 
ment of  members,  and  abolition  of  hereditary  legislators. 
Wlien  our  demands  are  complied  with,  we  shall  be  thankful, 
but  we  shall  not  rest.  On  the  contrary,  having  forged  an 
instrument  for  democratic  legislation,  we  shall  use  it."  ^ 

The  persons  who  charged  Mr.  Labouchere  with  dreaming 
because  he  thus  predicted  the  probable  course,  and  defined  the 
natural  principles,  of  future  democratic  legislation,  seem  to 
me  to  have  done  him  much  injustice.  His  forecast  of  political 
events  is  extremely  rational ;  and  I  cannot  but  agree  with  him 
In  thinking  it  absurd  to  suppose  that,  if  the  hard-toiled  and  the 
needy,  the  artisan  and  the  agricultural  laborer,  become  the 
depositaries  of  power,  and  if  they  can  find  agents  through  whom 
it  becomes  possible  for  them  to  exercise  it,  they  will  not  employ 
it  for  what  they  may  be  led  to  believe  are  their  own  interests. 
But  in  an  inquiry  whether,  independently  of  the  alarm  or  enthu- 
siasm which  they  excite  in  certain  persons  or  classes,  democratic 
^  Fortnightly  Review,  March  i,  1883. 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      405 

institutions  contain  any  seed  of  dissolution  or  extinction,  Mr. 
Labouchere's  speculation  becomes  most  interesting  just  where  it 
stops.     What  is  to  be  the  nature  of  the  legislation  by  which  the 
lot  of  the  artisan  and  of  the  agricultural  laborer  is  to  be  not 
merely  altered   for   the   better,   but   exchanged   for   whatevei 
station  and  fortune  they  may  think  it  possible  to  confer  on  them- 
selves by  their  own  supreme  authority?     Mr.   Labouchere's 
language,  in  the  above  passage  and  in  other  parts  of  his  paper, 
like  that  of  many  persons  who  agree  with  him  in  the  belief  that 
government   can   indefinitely   increase   human   happiness,   un- 
doubtedly suggests  the  opinion  that  the  stock  of  good  things  in 
the  world  is  practically  unlimited  in  quantity,  that  it  is  (so  to 
speak)  contained  in  a  vast  storehouse  or  granary,  and  that  out 
of  this  it  is  now  doled  in  unequal  shares  and  unfair  proportions. 
It  is  this  unfairness  and  inequality  which  democratic  law  will 
some  day  correct.     Now  I  am  not  concerned  to  deny  that,  at 
various  times  during  the  history  of  mankind,  narrow  oligarchies 
have  kept  too  much  of  the  wealth  of  the  world  to  themselves, 
or  that  false  economical  systems  have  occasionally  diminished 
the  total  supply  of  wealth,  and,  by  their  indirect  operation,  have 
caused  it  to  be  irrationally  distributed.     Yet  nothing  is  more 
certain  than  that  the  mental  picture   which  enchains  the  en- 
thusiasts for  benevolent  democratic  government  is  altogether 
false,  and  that,  if  the  mass  of  mankind  were  to  make  an  attempt 
at  redividing  the  common  stock  of   good  things,  they  would 
resemble,  not  a  number  of  claimants  insisting  on  the  fair  division 
of  a  fund,  but  a  mutinous  crew,  feasting  on  a  ship's  provisions, 
gorging  themselves  on  the  meat  and  intoxicating  themselves 
with  the  liquors,  but  refusing  to  navigate  the  vessel  to  port. 
It  is  among  the  simplest  of  economical  truths,  that  far  the  largest 
part  of  the  wealth  of  the  world  is  constantly  perishing  by  con- 
sumption, and  that,  if  it  be  not  renewed  by  perpetual  toil  and 
adventure,  either  the  human  race,  or  the  particular  community 
making  the  experiment  of  resting  without  being  thankful,  will 
be  extinguished  or  brought  to  the  very  verge  of  extinction. 
This  position,  although  it  depends  in  part  on  a  truth  of  which, 


4o6  HENRY   SUMNER  MAINE 

according  to  John  Stuart  Mill/  nobody  is  habitually  aware 
who  has  not  bestowed  some  thought  on  the  matter,  admits  of 
very  simple  illustration.  It  used  to  be  a  question  hotly  debated 
among  economists  how  it  was  that  countries  recovered  with  such 
surprising  rapidity  from  the  effects  of  the  most  destructive  and 
desolating  wars.  "An  enemy  lays  waste  a  country  by  fire  and 
sword,  and  destroys  or  carries  away  nearly  all  the  movable 
wealth  existing  in  it,  and  yet,  in  a  few  years  after,  everything 
is  much  as  it  was  before."  Mill,^  following  Chalmers,  gives  the 
convincing  explanation  that  nothing  in  such  a  case  has  hap- 
pened which  would  not  have  occurred  in  any  circumstances. 
"What  the  enemy  has  destroyed  would  have  been  destroyed  in 
a  little  time  by  the  inhabitants  themselves;  the  wealth  which 
they  so  rapidly  reproduce  would  have  needed  to  be  reproduced 
and  would  have  been  reproduced  in  any  case,  and  probably  in 
as  short  an  interval."  In  fact,  the  fund  by  which  the  life  of  the 
human  race  and  of  each  particular  society  is  sustained,  is  never 
in  a  statical  condition.  It  is  no  more  in  that  condition  than  is 
a  cloud  in  the  sky,  which  is  perpetually  dissolving  and  perpet- 
ually renewing  itself.  "Everything  which  is  produced  is  con- 
sumed ;  both  what  is  saved  and  what  is  said  to  be  spent ;  and 
the  former  quite  as  rapidly  as  the  latter."  The  wealth  of  man- 
kind is  the  result  of  a  continuing  process,  everywhere  complex 
and  delicate,  and  nowhere  of  such  complexity  and  delicacy  as 
in  the  British  Islands.  So  long  as  this  process  goes  on  under 
existing  influences,  it  is  not,  as  we  have  seen,  interrupted  by 
earthquake,  flood,  or  war ;  and,  at  each  of  its  steps,  the  wealth 
which  perishes  and  revives  has  a  tendency  to  increase.  But 
if  we  alter  the  character  or  diminish  the  force  of  these  influences, 
are  we  sure  that  wealth,  instead  of  increasing,  will  not  dwindle 
and  perhaps  disappear  ?  Mill  notes  an  exception  to  the  revival 
of  a  country  after  war.  It  may  be  depopulated,  and  if  there 
are  not  men  to  carry  it  on,  the  process  of  reproduction  will 
stop.  But  may  it  not  be  arrested  by  any  means  short  of  exter- 
minating the  population  ?  An  experience,  happily  now  rare  in 
1  Mill,  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  i,  5   5.  ^  Ibid.,  i,  5.  7. 


THE  PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT     407 

the  world,  shows  that  wealth  may  come  very  near  to  perishing 
through  diminished  energy  in  the  motives  of  the  men  who  repro- 
duce it.  You  may,  so  to  speak,  take  the  heart  and  spirit  out 
of  the  laborers  to  such  an  extent  that  they  do  not  care  to  work. 
Jeremy  Bentham  observed  about  a  century  ago  that  the  Turkish 
government  had  in  his  day  impoverished  some  of  the  richest 
countries  in  the  world  far  more  by  its  action  on  motives  than  by 
its  positive  exactions ;  and  it  has  always  appeared  to  me  that 
the  destruction  of  the  vast  wealth  accumulated  under  the 
Roman  Empire,  one  of  the  most  orderly  and  efficient  of  govern- 
ments, and  the  decHne  of  western  Europe  into  the  squalor  and 
poverty  of  the  Middle  Ages,  can  only  be  accounted  for  on  the 
same  principle.  The  failure  of  reproduction  through  relaxation 
of  motives  was  once  an  everyday  phenomenon  in  the  East; 
and  this  explains  to  students  of  Oriental  history  why  it  is  that 
throughout  its  course  a  reputation  for  statesmanship  was  always 
a  reputation  for  financial  statesmanship.  In  the  early  days  of 
the  East  India  Company,  villages  "broken  by  a  severe  settle- 
ment" were  constantly  calling  for  the  attention  of  the  govern- 
ment; the  assessment  on  them  did  not  appear  to  be  excessive 
on  English  fiscal  principles,  but  it  had  been  heavy  enough  to 
press  down  the  motives  to  labor,  so  that  they  could  barely  recover 
themselves.  The  phenomenon,  however,  is  not  confined  to  the 
East,  where  no  doubt  the  motives  to  toil  are  more  easily  affected 
than  in  western  societies.  No  later  than  the  end  of  the  last 
century,  large  portions  of  the  French  peasantry  ceased  to  culti- 
vate their  land,  and  large  numbers  of  French  artisans  declined 
to  work,  in  despair  at  the  vast  requisitions  of  the  Revolutionary 
Government  during  the  Reign  of  Terror;  and,  as  might  be 
expected,  the  penal  law  had  to  be  called  in  to  compel  their  return 
to  their  ordinary  occupations.^ 

It  is  perfectly  possible,  I  think,  as  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has 
shown  in  a  recent  admirable  volume,^  to  revive  even  in  our  day 

^  T&ine,  Origmes  de  la  France  Contemporaine,  torn,  iii.,  "La  Revolution." 
See,  as  to  artisans,  p.  75  (note),  and  as  to  cultivators,  p.  511. 
^  Herbert  Spencer,  The  Man  versus  the  State.     London,  1884. 


4o8  HENRY   SUMNER  MAINE 

the  fiscal  tyranny  which  once  left  even  European  populations  in 
doubt  whether  it  was  worth  while  preserving  life  by  thrift  and 
toil.  You  have  only  to  tempt  a  portion  of  the  population  into 
temporary  idleness  by  promising  them  a  share  in  a  fictitious 
hoard  lying  (as  Mill  puts  it)  in  an  imaginary  strong  box  which 
is  supposed  to  contain  all  human  wealth.  You  have  only  to 
take  the  heart  out  of  those  who  would  willingly  labor  and  save 
by  taxing  them  ad  misericordiam  for  the  most  laudable  phil- 
anthropic objects.  For  it  makes  not  the  smallest  difference  to 
the  motives  of  the  thrifty  and  industrious  part  of  mankind 
whether  their  fiscal  oppressor  be  an  Eastern  despot,  or  a  feudal 
baron,  or  a  democratic  legislature,  and  whether  they  are  taxed 
for  the  benefit  of  a  corporation  called  Society,  or  for  the  advan- 
tage of  an  individual  styled  King  or  Lord.  Here  then  is  the 
great  question  about  democratic  legislation,  when  carried  to 
more  than  a  moderate  length.  How  will  it  affect  human  mo- 
tives ?  What  motives  will  it  substitute  for  those  now  acting 
on  men  ?  The  motives,  which  at  present  impel  mankind  to  the 
labor  and  pain  which  produce  the  resuscitation  of  wealth  in 
ever-increasing  quantities,  are  such  as  infallibly  to  entail  in- 
equality in  the  distribution  of  wealth.  They  are  the  springs 
of  action  called  into  activity  by  the  strenuous  and  never-ending 
struggle  for  existence,  the  beneficent  private  war  which  makes 
one  man  strive  to  climb  on  the  shoulders  of  another  and  remain 
there  through  the  law  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 

These  truths  are  best  exemplified  in  the  part  of  the  world  to 
which  the  superficial  thinker  would  perhaps  look  for  the  triumph 
of  the  opposite  principle.  The  United  States  have  justly  been 
called  the  home  of  the  disinherited  of  the  earth;  but,  if  those 
vanquished  under  one  sky  in  the  struggle  for  existence  had  not 
continued  under  another  the  same  battle  in  which  they  had  been 
once  worsted,  there  would  have  been  no  such  exploit  performed 
as  the  cultivation  of  the  vast  American  territory  from  end  to 
end  and  from  side  to  side.  There  could  be  no  grosser  delusion 
than  to  suppose  this  result  to  have  been  attained  by  democratic 
legislation.     It  has  really  been  obtained  through  the  sifting  out 


THE   PROSPECTS  OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      409 

of  the  strongest  by  natural  selection.  The  government  of  the 
United  States,  which  I  examine  in  another  part  of  this  volume, 
now  rests  on  universal  suffrage,  but  then  it  is  only  a  political 
government.  It  is  a  government  under  which  coercive  restraint, 
except  in  politics,  is  reduced  to  a  minimum.  There  has  hardly 
ever  before  been  a  community  in  which  the  weak  have  been 
pushed  so  pitilessly  to  the  wall,  in  which  those  who  have  suc- 
ceeded have  so  uniformly  been  the  strong,  and  in  which  in  so  short 
a  time  there  has  arisen  so  great  an  inequality  of  private  fortune 
and  domestic  luxury.  And  at  the  same  time,  there  has  never 
been  a  country  in  which,  on  the  whole,  the  persons  distanced 
in  the  race  have  suffered  so  little  from  their  ill-success.  All  this 
beneficent  prosperity  is  the  fruit  of  recognizing  the  principle 
of  population,  and  the  one  remedy  for  its  excess  in  perpetual 
emigration.  It  all  reposes  on  the  sacredness  of  contract  and  the 
stability  of  private  property,  the  first  the  implement,  and  the 
last  the  reward,  of  success  in  the  universal  competition.  These, 
however,  are  all  principles  and  institutions  which  the  British 
friends  of  the ' '  artisan ' '  and ' '  agricultural  laborer ' '  seem  not  a  little 
inclined  to  treat  as  their  ancestors  did  agricultural  and  industrial 
machinery.  The  Americans  are  still  of  opinion  that  more  is 
to  be  got  for  human  happiness  by  private  energy  than  by  public 
legislation.  The  Irish,  however,  even  in  the  United  States,  are 
of  another  opinion,  and  the  Irish  opinion  is  manifestly  rising 
into  favor  here.  But  on  the  question,  whether  future  democratic 
legislation  will  follow  the  new  opinion,  the  prospects  of  popular 
government  to  a  great  extent  depend.  There  are  two  sets  of 
motives,  and  two  only,  by  which  the  great  bulk  of  the  materials 
of  human  subsistence  and  comfort  have  hitherto  been  produced 
and  reproduced.  One  has  led  to  the  cultivation  of  the  territory 
of  the  Northern  States  of  the  American  Union,  from  the  Atlantic 
to  the  Pacific.  The  other  had  a  considerable  share  in  bringing 
about  the  industrial  and  agricultural  progress  of  the  Southern 
States,  and  in  old  days  it  produced  the  wonderful  prosperity  of 
Peru  under  the  Incas.  One  system  is  economical  competition ; 
the  other  consists  in  the  daily  task,  perhaps  fairly  and  kindly 


4IO 


HENRY   SUMNER  MAINE 


allotted,  but  enforced  by  the  prison  or  the  scourge.  So  far  as 
we  have  any  experience  to  teach  us,  we  are  driven  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  every  society  of  men  must  adopt  one  system  or  the 
other,  or  it  will  pass  through  penury  to  starvation. 

I  have  thus  shown  that  popular  governments  of  the  modern 
type  have  not  hitherto  proved  stable  as  compared  with  other 
forms  of  political  rule,  and  that  they  include  certain  sources  of 
weakness  which  do  not  promise  security  for  them  in  the  near 
or  remote  future.  My  chief  conclusion  can  only  be  stated  nega- 
tively. There  is  not  at  present  sufhcient  evidence  to  warrant 
the  common  belief  that  these  governments  are  likely  to  be  of 
indefinitely  long  duration.  There  is,  however,  one  positive 
conclusion  from  which  no  one  can  escape  who  bases  a  forecast 
of  the  prospects  of  popular  government,  not  on  moral  preference 
or  a  priori  assumption,  but  on  actual  experience  as  witness  by 
history.  If  there  be  any  reason  for  thinking  that  constitutional 
freedom  will  last,  it  is  a  reason  furnished  by  a  particular  set  of 
facts,  with  which  EngHshmen  ought  to  be  famihar,  but  of  which 
many  of  them,  under  the  empire  of  prevailing  ideas,  are  exceed- 
ingly apt  to  miss  the  significance.  The  British  constitution 
has  existed  for  a  considerable  length  of  time,  and  therefore  free 
institutions  generally  may  continue  to  exist.  I  am  quite  aware 
that  this  will  seem  to  some  a  commonplace  conclusion,  perhaps  as 
commonplace  as  the  conclusion  of  M.  Taine,  who,  after  describ- 
ing the  conquest  of  all  France  by  the  Jacobin  Club,  declares  that 
his  inference  is  so  simple,  that  he  hardly  ventures  to  state  it. 
"Jusqua'a  present,  je  n'ai  guere  trouve  qu'un  (principe)  si 
simple  qu'il  semblera  pueril  et  que  j'ose  a  peine  I'enoncer.  II 
consiste  tout  entier  dans  cette  remarque,  qu'une  societe  humaine, 
surtout  une  societe  moderne,  est  une  chose  vaste  et  compliquee."  ^ 
This  observation,  that  "a  human  society,  and  particularly  a 

1  Up  to  the  present  I  have  found  scarcely  more  than  a  single  generaliza- 
tion, which  is  so  simple  that  it  will  seem  childish,  and  that  I  hardly  ven- 
ture to  pronounce  it.  It  consists  wholly  in  this  observation  :  that  a  human 
society,  especially  a  modern  society,  is  a  thing  vast  and  complicated  — 
Editors. 


THE   PROSPECTS   OF   POPULAR   GOVERNMENT      411 

modern  society,  is  a  vast  and  complicated  thing,"  is  in  fact  the 
very  proposition  which  Burke  enforced  with  all  the  splendor 
of  his  eloquence  and  all  the  power  of  his  argument;  but,  as 
Taine  says,  it  may  now  seem  to  some  too  simple  and  common- 
place to  be  worth  putting  into  words.  In  the  same  way,  many 
persons  in  whom  familiarity  has  bred  contempt,  may  think  it  a 
trivial  observation  that  the  British  constitution,  if  not  (as  some 
call  it)  a  holy  thing,  is  a  thing  unique  and  remarkable.  A  series 
of  undesigned  changes  brought  it  to  such  a  condition  that  satis- 
faction and  impatience,  the  two  great  sources  of  political  conduct, 
were  both  reasonably  gratified  under  it.  In  this  condition  it 
became,  not  metaphorically  but  literally,  the  envy  of  the 
world,  and  the  world  took  on  all  sides  to  copying  it.  The 
imitations  have  not  been  generally  happy.  One  nation  alone, 
consisting  of  Englishmen,  has  practiced  a  modification  of  it 
successfully,  amidst  abounding  material  plenty.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say,  that  the  only  evidence  worth  mentioning  for  the 
duration  of  popular  government  is  to  be  found  in  the  success 
of  the  British  constitution  during  two  centuries  under  special 
conditions,  and  in  the  success  of  the  American  constitution 
during  one  century  under  conditions  still  more  peculiar  and  more 
unlikely  to  recur.  Yet,  so  far  as  our  own  constitution  is  con- 
cerned, that  nice  balance  of  attractions,  which  caused  it  to  move 
evenly  on  its  stately  path,  is  perhaps  destined  to  be  disturbed. 
One  of  the  forces  governing  it  may  gain  dangerously  at  the 
expense  of  the  other ;  but  the  British  political  system,  with  the 
national  greatness  and  material  prosperity  attendant  on  it, 
may  yet  be  launched  into  space  and  find  its  last  affinities  in 
silence  and  cold. 


XIV 

ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT » 
Arthur  Twining  Hadley 

[Arthur  Twining  Hadley  (1856-)  has  been  all  his  life  associated  with 
Yale  University,  as  student,  tutor,  instructor,  professor,  and  since  1899  as 
its  president.  President  Hadley's  special  field  of  interest  has  been  poUtical 
science  t.nd  political  economy,  particularly  the  practical  questions  of  rail- 
roads and  transportation,  on  which  he  is  regarded  as  one  of  the  first 
authorities  in  the  country.  For  this  reason  he  was  appointed  by  President 
Taft  in  1910  as  head  of  the  Railroad  Securities  Commission. 

The  following  address  on  the  Ethics  of  Corporate  Management  emphasizes 
the  importance  of  high  moral  standards  in  business  relations,  an  idea  which 
is  expressed  in  many  of  the  author's  writings  and  addresses.  This  point  of 
view  underlies  the  whole  of  President  Hadley's  treatment  of  the  problems 
of  monopoly.  These  problems,  he  thinks,  cannot  be  effectively  solved 
either  by  restrictive  legislation  or  by  any  of  the  patent  schemes  for  indus- 
trial reform,  but  only  by  the  cultivation  of  a  wider  sense  of  responsibility 
and  fair  dealing  on  the  part  of  corporations. 

The  Ethics  of  Corporate  Management  was  oTie  of  the  Kennedy  Lectures  for 
1906,  in  the  School  of  Philanthropy,  New  York.  It  was  first  published  in 
the  North  American,  January,  1907,  and  in  the  same  year  included  with 
the  other  lectures  of  the  series  in  the  author's  Standards  of  Public 
Morality.] 

When  I  go  to  a  responsible  store  to  make  a  purchase,  I  have 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  price  charged  will  be  a  fair  one. 
I  may  not  like  the  goods ;  I  may  not  feel  that  I  can  afford  the 
price ;  but  if  I  like  the  goods  and  can  afford  the  price,  I  assume 
that  I  am  not  being  cheated.  The  competition  of  different  estab- 
lishments makes  the  general  scale  of  charges  just;  and  public 
sentiment  in  favor  of  a  one-price  system  assures  me  that  I  shall 

^  Reprinted  by  permission  from  Standards  of  Public  Morality,  by  Arthur 
Twining  Hadley  (The  Macmillan  Co.). 

412 


ETHICS   OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT 


413 


have  the  benefit  of  this  general  scale  of  charges  in  my  own  par- 
ticular case. 

If  I  go  to  a  bank  to  borrow  money  on  good  security,  I  have  the 
same  feeling.  The  competition  of  responsible  borrowers  on  the 
one  hand,  and  responsible  lenders  on  the  other,  makes  a  fair 
interest  rate  at  which  the  number  of  those  who  can  give  good 
security  for  the  management  of  other  people's  capital  absorbs 
the  offerings  of  those  who  are  willing  to  lend  their  money.  Or, 
if  I  try  to  sell  my  services  in  any  of  the  recognized  lines  of 
industry,  I  have  confidence  that  both  the  self-interest  and  self- 
respect  of  the  man  with  whom  I  am  dealing  will  lead  him  to  offer 
me  a  fair  market  rate,  and  that  the  scale  of  wages  or  fees  thus 
created  will  be  more  advantageous  on  the  whole  than  anything 
which  could  be  devised  by  law. 

Of  course  there  are  numerous  exceptions.  The  man  or  woman 
who  hires  a  cab  is  by  no  means  certain  that  the  self-respect  of  the 
cabman  will  lead  him  to  believe  in  a  one-price  system ;  and  while 
the  competition  of  different  cabs  with  one  another  may  make  a 
fair  enough  average  rate  of  compensation,  there  is  great  probabil- 
ity that  extortion  will  be  practiced  in  individual  instances. 
Therefore  the  law  steps  in  to  regulate  the  price  of  cabs.  The 
man  or  woman  who  has  occasion  to  borrow  of  a  pawnbroker  has 
no  assurance  that  the  pawnbroker  will  believe  in  a  one-price 
system  or  give  the  benefit  of  a  market  rate  of  interest.  Hence 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  well-founded  demand  for  usury  laws.  The 
only  reason  why  we  do  not  have  them  is  because  the  advocates 
of  such  laws  generally  object  to  interest  in  itself,  rather  than  to 
extortionate  variations  from  market  rates  of  interest. 

But  the  most  important  cases  of  departure  from  the  one-price 
system,  and  of  apparent  need  of  some  further  protection  than  is 
given  by  competition,  do  not  come  in  connection  with  cabs  01 
pawnbrokers  or  other  minor  industries  of  any  kind.  They  come 
in  connection  with  the  dealings  of  large  corporations  which 
obtain  a  monopoly  of  the  market  for  some  line  of  goods  or 
services. 

In  his  charmingly  practical  book  on  Politics,  Aristotle  tells 


414  ARTHUR  TWINING   HADLEY 

two  stories  which  are  of  perennial  interest  to  the  student  of 
industrial  combination.  In  the  first  of  these  he  relates  how 
Thales  of  Miletus  was  a  great  philosopher,  but  was  reproached 
by  his  neighbors  because  he  was  not  as  rich  as  they  were.  By 
his  acquaintance  with  astronomy,  Thales  foresaw  that  there 
would  be  large  crops  of  olives ;  and  he  purchased  all  the  olive 
presses  of  Miletus,  depositing  a  very  small  sum  in  each  case  so 
as  to  make  the  transaction  complete.  When  the  olives  were 
ripe,  behold  !  there  was  no  one  but  Thales  to  rent  men  the 
presses  whereby  they  might  make  their  oil ;  and  Thales,  who  was 
thus  able  to  charge  what  price  he  pleased,  realized  an  enormous 
sum.  He  did  this,  says  Aristotle,  not  because  he  cared  for  the 
money,  but  to  show  his  neighbors  that  a  philosopher  can.  be 
richer  than  anybody  else  if  he  wants  to,  and  if  he  is  not,  it  simply 
proves  that  he  has  more  worthy  objects  of  contemplation. 

There  was  a  man  in  Syracuse,  Aristotle  goes  on  to  say,  in  the 
days  of  Dionysius  the  Tyrant,  who  bought  all  the  iron  in  Sicily 
on  so  narrow  a  margin  that  without  raising  the  price  very  much 
he  was  able  to  make  twice  the  amount  of  his  total  investment  in  a 
short  time.  When  Dionysius  the  Tyrant  heard  of  this,  he  was 
pleased  with  the  ingenuity  of  the  man ;  and  he  told  him  that  he 
might  keep  his  money,  but  that  he  had  better  leave  Syracuse. 

These  stories  show  plainly  enough  that  monopolies  are  no  new 
thing ;  that  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago  there  was  a 
Standard  Oil  Company  of  Asia  Minor  and  a  United  States  Steel 
Corporation  of  Sicily;  and  that  the  President  of  the  United 
States  is  by  no  means  the  first  monarch  who  has  addressed  him- 
self somewhat  aggressively  to  the  problem  of  trust  regulation. 
But  in  ancient  times  these  monopolies  of  producers  or  merchants 
were  an  exception ;  now  they  are  becoming  the  general  rule. 

The  development  of  the  power  loom  and  the  spinning  machine 
in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  followed  shortly  by  that 
of  the  steam  engine,  substituted  a  system  of  centralized  industry, 
where  a  number  of  people  work  together,  for  the  scattered  in- 
dustry of  the  older  times,  where  people  worked  separately.  The 
invention  of  the  steamship  and  the  railroad  enabled  the  large 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  415 

factories  of  modern  times  to  send  their  goods  all  over  the  world, 
and  allowed  the  establishments  to  increase  in  size  as  long  as  any 
economy  in  production  was  to  be  gained  by  such  an  increase. 
The  capital  required  for  these  large  industries  was  far  beyond  the 
power  of  any  one  man  or  any  small  group  of  partners  to  furnish. 
The  modern  industrial  corporation,  with  free  transfer  of  stock, 
limited  liability  of  the  sharehoiJders,  and  representative  govern- 
ment through  a  board  of  directors,  was  developed  as  a  means  of 
meeting  this  need  for  capital.  Men  who  could  take  no  direct 
part  in  the  management  of  an  industrial  enterprise,  and  whose 
capital  was  only  a  very  small  fraction  of  what  was  needed  for  the 
purpose,  could,  under  the  system  of  limited  Hability,  safely 
associate  themselves  with  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  others  to 
take  the  chance  of  profit  which  concentration  of  capital  afforded. 

These  industrial  units  soon  became  so  large  that  a  single  one  of 
them  was  able  to  supply  the  whole  market.  Competition  was 
done  away  with,  and  monopoly  took  its  place.  This  effect  was 
first  felt  in  the  case  of  railroad  transportation.  You  could  not 
generally  have  the  choice  between  two  independent  lines  of  rail- 
road, because  business  which  would  furnish  a  profit  to  one  line 
was  generally  quite  inadequate  to  support  a  second.  Nor  could 
you  hope  for  the  competition  of  different  owners  of  locomotives 
and  cars  on  the  same  line  of  track,  because  of  the  opportunities  for 
accident  and  loss  to  which  such  a  system  was  exposed.  In  Eng- 
land, indeed,  they  were  impressed  with  the  analogy  of  a  railroad 
to  a  turnpike  or  canal,  and  for  nearly  half  a  century  after  the 
establishment  of  railroads  they  made  all  their  laws  on  the  sup- 
position that  cars  and  locomotives  would  be  owned  by  different 
people.  But  the  failure  of  these  laws,  when  so  persistently  en- 
acted and  backed  by  a  conservatism  of  feeling  so  strong  as  that 
of  the  EngHsh  nation,  is  the  best  proof  of  the  impracticability  of 
the  scheme.  By  1850  it  became  pretty  clear  that  most  railroads 
had  a  monopoly  of  their  local  business.  By  1870  the  conse- 
quences of  this  monopoly  had  become  quite  clearly  apparent. 

These  consequences  were  in  some  respects  good  and  in  some 
respects  bad.     The  railroad  managers  were  quick  to  introduce 


4i6  ARTHUR  TWINING  HADLEY 

improvements  and  to  efifect  economy  of  organization.  These  im- 
provements allowed  them  to  make  rates  very  low  on  long-dis- 
tance business  in  general,  and  particularly  on  business  which 
came  into  competition  with  other  railroads  or  with  water  routes. 
But  the  extreme  lowness  of  these  through  rates  only  emphasized 
the  glaring  inequahty  between  the  treatment  of  the  through  or 
competitive  business,  and  the  locgj  business  of  which  the  railroad 
had  a  monopoly.  On  the  old  turnpike  the  cost  of  transportation 
had  been  high,  but  the  shipper  could  rely  upon  the  price  as  fair. 
There  was  always  enough  competition  between  different  carriers 
to  prevent  them  from  making  extortionate  profits  on  any  one 
shipment.  On  the  railroad  which  took  the  place  of  the  turnpike 
the  cost  of  transportation  was  very  much  lower,  but  there  was 
no  assurance  whatever  of  fairness.  The  local  rates  were  some- 
times kept  two  or  three  times  as  high  as  the  through  ones ;  and 
the  shipper  had  to  see  carloads  of  freight  hauled  to  market  past 
his  house  from  more  distant  points  at  twenty-five  dollars  a  car- 
load, when  he  himself  was  paying  fifty  dollars  a  carload  for  but 
a  part  of  the  same  haulage.  Nor  was  this  the  worst.  Arbitrary 
differences  between  places  were  bad  enough;  but  there  was  a 
similar  discrimination  between  different  persons  in  the  same  place. 
The  local  freight  agent  was  a  sort  of  almoner  of  the  corporation. 
The  man  who  gained  his  ear,  whether  by  honest  means  or  not,  got 
a  low  rate.  The  man  who  failed  to  get  the  ear  of  the  freight 
agent  had  to  pay  a  much  higher  rate  for  the  same  service. 

In  this  country  things  were  at  their  worst  in  the  years  imme- 
diately following  the  Civil  War.  While  we  had  a  one-price  sys- 
tem in  the  trade  of  the  country,  both  wholesale  and  retail,  and  in 
its  banking,  and  to  a  large  degree  in  its  labor  market,  the  whole 
system  of  American  railroad  rates  was  run  on  principles  which  a 
decently  conducted  store  would  have  scorned  to  admit  into  its 
management.  Our  industrial  methods  had  changed  too  fast  for 
our  ethics  to  keep  pace  with  them.  In  the  old-fashioned  lines 
of  business  people  were  allowed  to  charge  what  prices  they 
pleased,  because  competition  kept  their  power  of  making  mis- 
takes within  narrow  limits.     In  the  local  railroad  freight  business 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  417 

competition  was  done  away  with,  and  the  managers  did  not  see 
the  necessity  of  substituting  any  other  legal  or  moral  restraint  in 
its  stead.  In  fact,  they  asserted  a  constitutional  right  to  be  free 
of  all  other  legal  or  moral  restraints.  They  regarded  the  liberty 
to  serve  the  public  in  their  own  way,  which  had  been  allowed 
them  under  the  competitive  system,  as  carrying  with  it  a  right 
to  hurt  the  pubUc  in  their  own  way  when  the  protection  of  compe- 
tition was  done  away  with.  Instead  of  seeing  that  the  constitu- 
tional rights  for  the  protection  of  property  had  grown  up  because 
property  was  wisely  used,  they  asserted  that  it  was  none  of  the 
public's  business  how  they  used  the  property,  as  long  as  they  kept 
within  the  letter  of  the  Constitution. 

Of  course  this  arbitrary  exercise  of  power  provoked  a  reaction. 
The  state  legislatures  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  passed  the  various 
Granger  laws  which  were  placed  on  their  statute  books  from  1870 
to  1875.^  These  laws  represented  an  attempt  to  reduce  rates  as 
unintelligent  and  crude  as  had  been  the  attempts  of  the  railroad 
agents  to  maintain  rates.  In  the  conflict  of  constitutional  au- 
thority, the  courts  on  the  whole  took  the  side  of  the  legislature 
more  than  they  did  that  of  the  railroads ;  and  the  ill-judged  laws 
regulating  railroad  charges,  which  could  not  be  repealed  until 
several  years  too  late,  were  an  important  factor  in  increasing  the 
commercial  distress  that  followed  the  crisis  of  1873. 

Just  when  things  were  at  their  worst  a  really  great  man  ap- 
peared on  the  scene  of  action  in  Charles  Francis  Adams  of  the 
Massachusetts  Railroad  Commission.  He  promulgated  an  idea, 
essentially  ethical  in  its  character,  which  not  only  was  of  great 
service  at  the  time,  but  has  been  the  really  vital  force  in  all  good 
schemes  of  corporate  regulation  ever  since.  It  is  hardly  too 
much  to  say  that  all  our  plans  for  deaUng  with  corporate  mo- 
nopoly have  been  successful  according  to  the  extent  to  which 
they  conformed  to  Mr.  Adams's  idea,  and  that  their  ill  success  in 
various  cases  has  been  the  result  of  their  departure  from  it.  Mr. 
Adams's  central  principle  was  this.     In  the  management  of  a 

^  State  statutes  regulating  charges  for  common  carriers  and  other  public 
service  corporations.  —  Editors. 


4i8  ARTHUR  TWINING  HADLEY 

railroad  the  temporary  interests  of  the  road  and  of  its  various 
shippers  are  often  divergent ;  but  the  permanent  interests  of  the 
railroad  and  of  the  various  shippers  come  very  much  closer  to- 
gether than  the  temporary  ones,  and  can  almost  be  said  to  coin- 
cide. A  railroad  which  is  managed  to  make  the  most  profit  for 
the  moment  will  try  to  make  very  low  rates  on  through  business 
that  might  otherwise  go  to  another  line,  and  will  squeeze  to  the 
utmost  the  local  shippers  who  have  no  such  refuge.  But  if  a 
manager  looks  five  years  or  ten  years  ahead,  he  will  see  that  such 
a  policy  kills  the  local  business,  which  after  all  must  furnish  the 
road's  best  custom,  and  stimulates  a  kind  of  competitive  business 
which  can  and  will  go  somewhere  else  when  the  slightest  oppor- 
tunity is  given.  The  manager  who  looks  to  the  future,  therefore, 
instead  of  to  the  present,  will  put  the  local  business  on  the  same 
level  as  the  through  business ;  and  if  he  makes  any  difference  at 
all  in  the  charge,  it  will  be  due  to  a  slightly  superior  economy 
of  handUng  large  and  regular  consignments  for  long  distances,  as 
compared  with  the  small  and  irregular  consignments  of  inter- 
mediate points.  The  agent  who  simply  wants  to  get  the  most 
money  that  he  can  for  the  moment  will  see  an  apparent  advan- 
tage in  making  a  special  bargain  with  each  customer.  The  agent 
who  takes  a  long  look  ahead  will  do  just  what  the  storekeeper 
does  who  takes  a  long  look  ahead.  He  will  see  that  the  right  cus- 
tomer to  develop  is  the  self-respecting  man  who  is  content  with 
the  same  treatment  as  other  customers ;  who  is  too  proud  for 
begging  and  too  honest  for  bribery. 

I  cannot  go  into  all  the  details  of  the  application  of  this  theory. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  during  the  comparatively  short  time  when 
he  was  at  the  head  of  the  Massachusetts  Commission,  Mr.  Adams 
did,  in  fact,  persuade  the  railroad  men  of  his  state,  and  of  a  great 
many  other  states,  to  take  this  view  of  the  matter ;  that  by  his 
recommendation,  made  without  any  authority  except  the  au- 
thority of  common  sense,  he  permanently  removed  more  abuses 
in  railroad  management  than  all  the  various  state  statutes  put 
together ;  and  that  the  judicial  decisions  of  the  years  from  1875 
to  1885,  when  Mr.  Adams's  influence  was  dominant,  show  a  con- 


ETHICS   OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  419 

stantly  increased  understanding,  not  only  of  the  principles  of  rail- 
road economy,  but  of  the  principles  which  make  for  the  perma- 
nent public  welfare  of  shippers  and  investors  alike. 

I  have  spoken  of  Mr.  Adams's  influence  as  an  ethical  one. 
The  Railroad  Commission  of  Massachusetts,  under  the  original 
bill  which  established  it,  had  practically  no  powers  except  the 
power  to  report.  It  was  for  this  reason  regarded  by  many  as 
likely  to  be  a  totally  ineffective  body.  This  absence  of  specific 
powers  was  just  what  Mr.  Adams  welcomed.  It  threw  the  Com- 
mission back  on  the  power  of  common  sense  — -  which  does  not 
seem  as  strong  as  statutory  rights  to  prosecute  people  and  put 
them  in  prison,  but  which,  in  the  hands  of  a  man  who  really 
possesses  it,  is  actually  very  much  stronger.  And  when  commis- 
sions of  more  recent  years,  disregarding  the  experience  of  Mr. 
Adams,  have  besought  over  and  over  again  for  an  increase  of 
their  power  to  make  rates,  and  their  power  to  prosecute  offenders, 
and  their  power  to  keep  the  courts  from  reviewing  their  acts,  I 
am  reminded  of  the  minister  in  the  country  church,  who  said, 
"O  Lord,  we  pray  for  power;  O  Lord,  we  pray  for  power;" 
until  an  old  deacon,  unable  to  contain  himself,  interrupted, 
"'Taint  power  you  lack,  young  man;   it's  idees  !" 

In  a  complex  matter  like  this  we  are  governed  by  public  opin- 
ion. Anything  that  makes  it  necessary  for  a  man  to  get  public 
opinion  behind  a  measure  of  administration  or  regulation  pre- 
vents him  from  trying  unsound  experiments,  and  assures  him 
that  the  things  that  he  carries  through  will  be  successful  in  fact 
and  not  merely  in  name.  Good  sense  is  needed  to  create  ac- 
quiescence on  the  part  of  the  courts,  and  to  prevent  widespread 
evasion  of  statutes  and  ordinances  by  the  business  men  of  the 
community  as  a  body.  Any  measure  which  seems  to  dispense 
with  the  necessity  of  its  exercise  is  pretty  sure  to  end  in  disaster. 

I  have  gone  into  the  detail  of  Mr.  Adams's  work  for  the  sake 
of  this  ethical  lesson  which  it  inculcates.  We  have  passed  be- 
yond the  conditions  of  Mr.  Adams's  time.  National  regulation 
has  taken  the  place  of  state  regulation  of  railroads.  Other  forms 
of  corporate  activity  have  organized  into  monopolies  perhaps 


420  ARTHUR  TWINING  HADLEY 

more  widespread  and  powerful  than  any  railroad  monopoly 
ever  was.  The  relations  of  corporations  to  their  employees,  and 
the  mutual  duties  of  organizations  of  capital  and  labor  toward 
the  public  in  making  continuous  public  service  possible,  have  be- 
come vastly  more  complex  than  they  were  thirty  years  ago.  But 
the  essential  fact  still  remains  that  the  problem  can  be  settled 
only  by  the  exercise  of  common  sense  and  a  certain  amount  of 
unselfishness.  Any  law  which  seeks  to  render  these  qualities 
unnecessary  or  superfluous  is  foredoomed  to  failure.  Any  citizen 
who  lets  these  qualities  fall  into  abeyance  falls  short  of  a  proper 
conception  of  public  duty.  The  larger  his  position  of  influence 
in  the  industrial  world,  the  greater  is  the  responsibiUty  upon  him 
to  bring  these  qualities  into  use  in  the  conduct  of  corporate 
business. 

The  president  of  a  large  corporation  is  in  a  place  of  public 
trust.  In  an  obvious  sense  he  is  a  trustee  for  the  stockholders 
and  creditors  of  his  corporation.  In  a  less  obvious  but  equally 
important  sense  he  is  a  trustee  on  behalf  of  the  public. 

In  regard  to  the  first  of  these  points,  the  community  has  made 
substantial  and  gratifying  progress  toward  proper  moral  stand- 
ards and  their  enforcement.  It  will  perhaps  create  surprise 
that  I  say  this  so  unreservedly,  when  we  have  the  results  of  the 
insurance  scandals  freshly  in  mind.^  But  bad  as  these  things  were, 
they  were  not  nearly  so  bad  as  many  things  that  happened  a 
generation  earlier;  and  when  the  insurance  scandals  became 
known,  they  created  an  outburst  of  public  feeling  of  a  very  differ- 
ent kind  from  anything  which  would  have  developed  forty  years 
ago.  The  spontaneous  and  overwhelming  character  of  this  out- 
burst shows  a  great  moral  advance.  In  the  year  1870  it  was  the 
commonest  thing  in  the  world  for  the  president  of  a  large  corpo- 
ration to  use  his  position  as  a  means  of  enriching  himself  and  his 
friends  at  the  expense  of  the  stockholders  in  general ;  and  it 
might  almost  be  added  that  it  was  the  rarest  thing  in  the  world 

^  The  insurance  scandals  exposed  by  the  New  York  Legislative  Investi- 
gating Committee  in  1905,  involving  some  of  the  most  powerful  companies 
in  the  state.  —  Editors. 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT  421 

for  anybody  to  object.  The  fact  that  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  ad- 
mitted his  stockholders  to  the  benefit  of  profitable  "deals,"  instead 
of  taking  the  whole  for  himself  and  his  friends,  was  a  sufficient 
departure  from  the  usage  of  the  time  to  excite  universal  remark. 
The  worst  things  which  were  done  in  our  insurance  companies 
represent  a  pious  regard  for  the  law  and  a  scrupulous  observance 
of  the  principles  of  morality,  as  compared  with  some  of  the  trans- 
actions in  Erie  in  the  early  seventies.  Ten  years  later  things  had 
improved.  It  was  no  longer  considered  proper  for  a  president  to 
wreck  his  company  in  order  to  enrich  himself.  Yet  even  in  this 
decade  it  was  held  that  minorities  of  stockholders  had  no  rights 
which  majorities  were  bound  to  respect ;  and  while  the  public 
did  not  justify  the  president  in  getting  rich  at  the  expense  of  his 
stockholders,  it  saw  no  harm  if  he  used  his  inside  information  to 
get  rich  at  the  expense  of  anybody  and  everybody  else.  It  is 
greatly  to  the  credit  of  some  of  our  best  railroad  men  that  in  the 
last  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  we  rose  above  this  state  of 
things.  The  example  of  a  recent  president  of  the  Lake  Shore 
Railroad,  who  died  a  relatively  poor  man  when  the  stock  of  his 
corporation  stood  higher  than  that  of  almost  any  other  railroad 
in  the  country,  is  a  thing  which  deserves  to  be  remembered  — 
and  which  has  been. 

Banks  and  railroads  were  the  two  lines  of  business  where  cor- 
porate scandals  first  developed  on  a  large  scale.  They  are  now 
the  two  lines  of  business  where  standards  of  corporate  honor, 
beyond  what  the  law  could  enforce,  have  become  pretty  well  es- 
tablished. This  is  no  mere  coincidence.  Corporate  powers  gave 
opportunities  for  abuse  which  did  not  exist  before.  Where  these 
powers  were  greatest,  these  abuses  developed  first  and  made  the 
earliest  public  scandals.  It  was  here  that  the  business  men  them- 
selves felt  the  need  of  remedies  deeper  reaching  than  those  which 
the  law  could  give.  Combinations  of  merchants  or  manufac- 
turers or  of  financiers  outside  the  regular  Hues  of  banking  were  a 
later  thing,  and  therefore  we  are  only  at  this  moment  correcting 
the  evils  which  are  incident  to  their  conduct. 

It  takes  a  long  time  for  a  man  to  learn  to  transfer  a  principle 


422  ARTHUR  TWINING  HADLEY 

of  morality  which  he  fully  recognizes  in  one  field  to  another  field 
of  slightly  different  location  and  character,  particularly  if  the 
application  of  strict  morality  in  the  new  field  is  going  to  hurt  his 
personal  interest.  I  remember  a  story  of  a  country  court  in  a 
warranty  case  which  furnishes  an  instance  in  point.  One  man 
had  sold  another  a  cow,  and  had  represented  that  cow  as  pos- 
sessing certain  good  qualities  —  adding,  however,  that  he  did 
not  warrant  her.  The  cow  proved  not  to  possess  the  qualities 
alleged,  and  the  buyer  sought  to  recover  the  purchase  money. 
As  there  was  no  dispute  about  the  facts,  the  plaintiff's  attorney 
thought  that  he  had  an  easy  case ;  for  it  is  a  well-established 
principle  of  law  that  a  disclaimer  of  warranty  in  such  a  sale  does 
not  protect  the  transaction  from  the  taint  of  fraud,  if  the  matters 
in  question  were  ones  which  the  seller  really  could  know  and  the 
buyer  could  not.  He  showed  a  sufficient  number  of  legal  prece- 
dents to  illustrate  this  principle,  but  was  somewhat  dumfounded 
when  the  opposing  lawyer  rose  and  said:  "May  it  please  the 
court,  every  one  of  the  cases  cited  by  my  learned  brother  is  a 
horse  case.  I  defy  him  to  produce  one  relating  to  horned  cattle." 
The  court  was  impressed  with  this  fact,  and  instructed  the  jury 
to  the  effect  that  it  had  been  established  from  time  immemorial 
that  a  disclaimer  of  warranty  was  invalid  with  regard  to  a  horse, 
but  that  the  case  of  a  cow  was  something  totally  different.  We 
witnessed  a  somewhat  similar  condition  in  recent  years,  when 
men  who  would  have  recognized  that  it  was  wrong  to  get  rich 
at  the  expense  of  a  stockholder,  who  had  clear  and  definite  rights 
to  dividends  that  were  earned,  were  perfectly  willing  to  use  all 
kinds  of  means  to  enrich  themselves  at  the  expense  of  the  policy- 
holders, whose  rights  were  vague  and  indefinite.  The  lesson  of 
last  year  was  a  terrible  one ;  but  I  believe  that  it  has  been  thor- 
oughly learned.  The  business  community  of  to-day  recognizes 
that  the  president  and  directors  of  a  corporation  have  a  fiduciary 
relation  both  to  their  stockholders  and  to  their  creditors ;  that 
any  man  who  disregards  this  relation  is  guilty  of  breach  of  trust, 
Just  as  much  as  he  would  be  if  he  used  his  position  as  guardian  of 
an  orphan  to  enrich  himself  at  the  expense  of  his  ward.     If  any 


ETHICS   OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  423 

man  does  not  see  this,  the  business  community  despises  his  intel- 
lect. If  he  does  see  this  and  acts  in  disregard  of  it,  the  business 
community  despises  his  character. 

Unfortunately  the  obligation  of  the  managers  of  our  corpora- 
tions to  the  public  is  not  yet  as  clearly  recognized  as  their  obliga- 
tion to  the  stockholders.  Some  of  those  who  are  most  scrupulous 
about  doing  all  that  they  can  for  the  stockholders  make  this  an 
excuse  for  doing  as  little  as  they  can  for  the  public  in  general,  and 
disclaim  indignantly  the  existence  of  any  wider  trust  or  any  out- 
side duty  which  should  interfere  with  the  performance  of  their 
primary  trust  to  the  last  penny.  There  is  many  a  man  who  in 
the  conduct  of  his  own  life,  and  even  of  his  own  personal  business, 
is  scrupulously  regardful  of  public  opinion,  but  who,  as  the  presi- 
dent of  a  corporation,  disregards  that  opinion  rather  ostenta- 
tiously. Personally  he  is  sensitive  to  public  condemnation ;  but 
as  a  trustee  he  honestly  believes  that  he  has  no  right  to  indulge 
any  such  sensitiveness.  He  is  unselfish  in  the  one  case,  and 
selfish  in  the  other.  I  believe  that  this  results  from  an  extremely 
shortsighted  view  of  the  matter ;  and  that  the  conscientious  ful- 
fillment of  wider  obligations,  which  he  assumes  as  a  matter  of 
course  when  his  own  money  is  at  stake,  is  at  once  wise  policy  and 
sound  morality  when  he  is  acting  as  trustee  for  the  money  and 
interests  of  others. 

Even  from  the  narrowest  standpoint  of  pecuniary  interest,  the 
duty  of  the  corporate  president  to  the  investors  demands  that  he 
should  by  his  life  and  his  language  strive  to  diminish  the  danger 
of  legal  spoliation  which  threatens  property  rights  in  general  and 
the  rights  of  corporate  property  in  particular.  This  obligation  is 
partly  recognized,  and  partly  not.  Our  leaders  of  industry,  as  a 
rule,  do  not  spend  great  sums  on  ostentatious  luxury,  and  do 
spend  great  sums  on  objects  of  public  benefit.  Both  of  these 
facts  are  invaluable  conservative  forces.  On  the  other  hand,  too 
many  of  them  insist  publicly  on  an  extreme  view  of  their  legal 
rights  and  claims,  which  cannot  help  irritating  their  opponents, 
and  which  does  a  great  deal  more  harm  to  the  interests  of  prop- 
erty than  most  people  think.      It   was   the  arrogance  of  the 


424 


ARTHUR  TWINING  HADLEY 


freight  agents,  quite  as  much  as  the  mistakes  in  their  schedule  of 
charges,  that  precipitated  the  Granger  agitation.  They  defi- 
antly refused  to  recognize  the  shipper's  point  of  view.  Every 
such  defiance  by  the  head  of  a  large  corporation  makes  inore  con- 
verts to  radicalism  and  socialism  than  the  speaker  ever  dreams. 
If  a  man  intends  to  stand  on  his  legal  rights,  it  is  generally  wise 
for  him  to  keep  as  quiet  as  the  circumstances  admit.  The  cases 
are  few  and  far  between  where  a  loud  statement  in  advance  that 
he  is  going  to  stand  on  his  legal  rights,  and  that  those  rights  in 
his  judgment  are  consonant  with  the  laws  of  God,  produces  any- 
thing but  an  adverse  effect  on  his  interests  and  on  the  interests  of 
those  whom  he  represents.  It  is  not  for  the  profit  of  the  year's 
balance  sheet  that  the  corporate  president  should  regard  himself 
as  responsible,  but  for  the  profit  in  the  long  run ;  and  that  profit 
in  the  long  run  is  identified  with  the  maintenance  of  a  conserva- 
tive spirit  and  the  avoidance  of  unnecessary  conflicts  between 
those  who  have  and  those  who  have  not. 

The  duty  of  the  corporate  president  to  the  investors  also  de- 
mands that  he  use  all  wise  means  for  the  maintenance  of  continu- 
ous pubHc  service.  The  more  complete  the  monopoly  which  he 
has,  and  the  more  vital  the  public  necessity  which  he  provides, 
the  greater  is  the  importance  of  this  aspect  of  his  trust  for  the 
permanence  of  the  interests  which  he  represents.  For  if  the 
employer  is  indifferent  to  the  public  need  in  this  regard,  the  em- 
ployees will  be  still  more  indifferent.  If  he  tries  to  make  public 
necessity  a  means  to  reenforce  his  demands,  they  will  make  that 
public  necessity  a  means  to  reenforce  their  demands ;  and  in  this 
contest  the  employees  will  have  every  advantage  on  their  side. 
Each  conflict  of  this  kind  will  increase  the  demand  for  public 
regulation  of  corporate  affairs,  even  if  the  interests  of  the  inves- 
tors suffer  thereby ;  and  it  may  reach  a  point  where  many  lines 
of  business  will  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of  private  corporations 
and  into  the  hands  of  the  government. 

In  the  old  days,  when  the  public  was  served  by  a  number  of  in- 
dependent establishments,  a  strike  was  a  grave  matter  for  the 
establishment  where  it  existed  and  a  comparatively  small  thing 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  425 

for  anybody  else.  The  public  got  its  goods  from  some  other 
quarter.  The  slight  shortage  in  the  supply  might  raise  the 
prices  a  little,  but  it  did  not  produce  a  famine.  The  community 
as  a  whole  could  wait  complacently  for  the  fight  to  be  settled. 
If,  however,  the  company  has  a  monopoly,  the  conditions  are 
reversed.  The  strike,  if  protracted,  causes  great  inconvenience 
and  generally  considerable  suffering  to  the  public,  while  the 
effect  on  the  finances  of  the  corporation  is  often  comparatively 
sHght.  Indeed,  it  has  become  a  proverb  that  strikes  are  not  as  a 
rule  good  reasons  for  sale  of  the  securities  of  the  companies 
affected.  I  am  afraid  that  this  fact  makes  the  presidents  of  our 
corporations,  especially  those  who  hold  a  narrow  view  of  their 
duties,  more  careless  than  they  otherwise  would  be  about  men 
whom  they  choose  for  positions  of  superintendence,  and  about 
the  policy  which  they  adopt  in  early  stages  of  labor  disputes. 
But  it  is  upon  care  in  these  particulars,  rather  than  upon  any 
machinery  for  compulsory  arbitration,  that  we  must  rely  for  the 
prevention  of  strikes.  I  suppose  that  sometime  we  shall  devise 
systems  of  arbitration  which  will  avoid  a  large  number  of  our  in- 
dustrial quarrels ;  but  those  that  I  have  actually  seen  in  opera- 
tion do  not  appear  very  promising.  We  are  told  that  compulsory 
arbitration  has  been  made  to  work  in  New  Zealand ;  but  some 
of  the  official  information  which  we  get  from  New  Zealand  has 
been  so  totally  discredited  that  we  must  be  a  little  cautious  about 
accepting  any  of  the  testimony  which  is  transmitted  to  us.  Nor 
do  I  believe  very  greatly  in  the  efficiency  of  profit-sharing  sys- 
tems as  a  general  means  of  preventing  labor  troubles.  Some- 
times they  work  well ;  oftener  they  do  not.  Plans  for  attaching 
the  laborers  to  the  corporate  service  by  pension  funds,  by  the 
distribution  of  stock,  and  other  means  of  this  kind,  are  perhaps 
rather  more  promising.  Yet  even  these  are  limited  in  their 
applicability,  and  sometimes  cause  more  unrest  than  they  pre- 
vent. 

For  the  present,  it  is  not  to  any  machinery  that  we  must  look 
for  the  solution  of  these  difficulties.  It  is  to  a  wider  sense  of 
responsibility  on  the  part  of  directors  and  general  officers.     The 


426  ARTHUR   TWINING   HADLEY 

man  who  selects  his  subordinates  solely  for  their  fitness  in  mak- 
ing the  results  of  the  year's  accounts  look  best,  and  instructs 
them  to  work  for  these  results  at  the  sacrifice  of  all  other  inter- 
ests, encourages  the  employees  to  work  for  themselves  in  defiance 
of  the  needs  either  of  the  corporation  or  of  the  public,  and  does 
more  than  almost  any  professional  agitator  to  foster  the  spirit 
which  makes  labor  organizations  unreasonable  in  their  demands 
and  defiant  in  their  attitude.  For  the  laborers,  like  some  of 
the  rest  of  us,  are  a  good  deal  more  affected  by  feeling  than  by 
reason ;  a  good  deal  more  influenced  by  examples  than  by  syl- 
logisms. 

When  I  was  connected  with  the  Railroad  Gazette,  we  had  occa- 
sion to  discuss  a  strike  on  the  part  of  one  of  the  best  of  the  labor 
unions,  in  which,  contrary  to  the  usual  practice  of  that  organiza- 
tion, the  demands  were  quite  unreasonable.  There  was  some- 
thing puzzling  in  the  whole  situation,  which  I  could  not  account 
for.  A  close  observer  who,  though  he  was  on  the  side  of  the 
corporation,  had  sense  enough  to  look  at  the  facts  dispassionately, 
said,  "Do  you  know  Blank?"  naming  a  man  high  in  the  operat- 
ing department  of  the  road  concerned.  I  said  that  I  did. 
"  Blank,"  he. said,  "is  an  honest  man.  He  is,  according  to  all  his 
lights,  an  honorable  man.  And  yet  if  Blank  were  placed  over  me, 
I  would  strike  on  any  pretext,  good  or  bad,  just  to  show  how  I 
hated  his  ways  of  doing  business.  This  strike  is,  of  course,  an 
unjustifiable  one.  For  the  sake  of  all  concerned  it  should  be 
stopped  as  soon  as  possible,  and  your  paper  should  say  so.  But 
when  the  strike  is  over,  sail  into  the  road  with  all  your  might  for 
employing  a  man  like  Blank  in  a  position  precisely  the  opposite 
of  anything  for  which  Providence  designed  him,"  It  soon  be- 
came evident  that  this  was  a  true  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
strike.  The  company  saw  the  situation  and  transferred  the 
man,  on  its  own  account,  to  another  post  for  which  he  was  more 
fitted. 

Workmen  are  accessible  to  examples  of  loyalty,  as  well  as 
examples  of  selfishness.  One  of  our  very  large  manufacturing 
concerns  in  western  Pennsylvania  a  few  years  ago  made  a  change 


ETHICS   OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  427 

ill  its  operating  head.  Not  many  months  after  the  change  I  had 
the  opportunity  to  inquire  of  a  foreman  how  things  were  work- 
ing under  the  new  management.  "Sir,"  was  the  reply,  "there 
isn't  a  man  in  the  works  but  what  would  go  straight  through  hell 
with  the  new  boss  if  he  wanted  it."  I  told  the  "new  boss"  the 
story;  and  all  he  said  was,  "I  guess  they  know  that  I'd  do  the 
same  for  them."  That  was  the  voice  of  a  man  —  an  exceptional 
man;  but  what  he  really  accomplished  represents  a  kind  of 
result  which  all  of  us  will  do  well  to  keep  in  view. 

In  the  great  railroad  strikes  of  1877,  when  the  Brotherhood  of 
Locomotive  Engineers,  —  at  that  time  a  far  less  conservatively 
managed  organization  than  it  has  since  become,  —  intoxicated 
with  its  successes  in  the  South,  ordered  a  general  tie-up  of  New 
England,  the  men  of  the  New  York  &  New  England  Railroad 
met  the  order  with  a  flat  refusal.  They  had  no  other  reason, 
and  they  gave  no  other  reason,  than  their  loyalty  to  a  man  who 
was  at  that  time  a  superintendent  of  no  particular  reputation  or 
influence  outside  of  his  own  immediate  sphere  of  duty,  — 
Charles  P.  Clark,  who  afterward  became  president  of  the  road. 
That  one  man  by  his  personality  not  only  prevented  a  general 
strike  throughout  New  England,  but  by  that  act  restored  the 
balance  of  industrial  force  in  the  United  States  at  a  time  when  it 
was  more  seriously  threatened  than  it  ever  has  been  before  or 
since. 

A  few  years  later,  when  a  strike  on  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad 
was  scheduled  by  the  Knights  of  Labor,  the  president  of  that 
road  prevented  the  strike  by  the  simple  expedient  of  so  arranging 
matters  that  the  responsibility  for  the  interruption  of  public 
service  would  at  each  stage  of  the  proceedings  be  clearly  put  upon 
the  labor  leaders  themselves.  If  the  company  had  been  simply 
claiming  the  right  to  serve  itself,  they  would  have  claimed  an 
equal  right  to  serve  themselves,  and  might  very  possibly  have 
had  the  sympathy  of  the  public  behind  them.  But  when  matters 
were  so  arranged  in  advance  that  the  responsibility  for  the  inter- 
ruption rested  upon  their  shoulders  alone,  even  the  Knights  of 
Labor  —  and  Western  Knights  of  Labor  at  that  —  shrank  from 


428  ARTHUR   TWINING  HADLEY 

taking  the  responsibility  of  a  conflict  with  the  nation.  Of  course 
strikes  will  continue  to  occur  after  all  precautions  are  taken. 
They  may  come  to  the  man  or  the  company  that  least  deserves  it. 
But  we  can  impress  upon  the  managers  of  corporations  the  duty 
of  showing  more  sohcitude  for  the  protection  of  the  public 
against  the  disastrous  results  of  the  strike  when  it  does  come,  and 
the  unwisdom  of  saying  much  about  the  sacredness  of  the  rights 
of  private  property  under  the  Constitution  at  a  time  when  such 
words  can  only  irritate  the  employees  and  alienate  the  suffering 
public. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  sacredness  of  property  right  in  this  country 
which  goes  far  beyond  the  letter  of  the  Constitution.  The  Con- 
stitution guarantees  that  no  man  shall  be  deprived  of  his  prop- 
erty without  due  process  of  law ;  that  no  state  shall  pass  any 
law  impairing  the  obligation  of  contract ;  and  that  a  corporation 
has  the  right  of  a  person  in  the  sense  of  being  entitled  to  fair 
and  equal  treatment.  The  conservatism  of  the  American  people 
goes  farther  than  this.  It  supports  a  business  man  in  the  exer- 
cise of  his  traditional  rights,  because  it  believes,  on  the  basis  of 
the  experience  of  centuries,  that  the  exercise  of  these  rights  will 
conduce  to  the  public  interests.  It  puts  the  large  industries  of 
the  country  in  the  hands  of  corporations,  even  when  this  results 
in  creating  corporate  monopoly,  because  it  distrusts  the  unre- 
stricted extension  of  government  activity,  and  believes  that  busi- 
ness is  on  the  whole  better  handled  by  commercial  agencies  than 
by  political  ones.  But  every  case  of  failure  to  meet  public  needs 
somewhat  shakes  the  public  in  this  confidence ;  and  this  confi- 
dence is  not  only  shaken  but  destroyed  if  the  manager  of  a  cor- 
poration claims  immunity  from  interference  as  a  moral  or  con- 
stitutional right,  independent  of  the  public  interests  involved. 

Personally,  I  am  one  of  those  who  look  with  serious  distrust  on 
each  extension  of  political  activity.  I  believe  that  the  inter- 
state commerce  law  ^  did  more  to  prevent  wise  railroad  regulation 
than  any  other  event  in  the  history  of  the  country.     I  think. 

^  A  federal  act  for  the  regulation  of  railroad  rates,  passed  in  1887.  — 
Editors. 


ETHICS   OF   CORPORATE   MANAGEMENT  429 

that  the  courts  would  have  dealt  with  our  industrial  problems 
better  than  they  have  done  if  the  antitrust  act  ^  had  never  been 
passed.  I  have  gravely  doubted  the  wisdom  of  some  of  the 
more  recent  measures  passed  by  the  national  government.  But 
I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to  the  fact  that  these  things  are  what 
business  men  must  expect  unless  business  ethics  is  somewhat 
modified  to  meet  existing  conditions.  Industrial  corporations 
grew  up  into  power  because  they  met  the  needs  of  the  past. 
To  stay  in  power,  they  must  meet  the  needs  of  the  present,  and 
arrange  their  ethics  accordingly.  If  they  can  do  it  by  their  own 
voluntary  development  of  the  sense  of  trusteeship,  that  is  the 
simplest  and  best  solution.  But  if  not,  one  of  two  things  will 
happen :  vastly  increased  legal  regulation,  or  state  ownership 
of  monopolies.  Those  who  fear  the  effects  of  increased  govern- 
ment activity  must  prove  by  their  acceptance  of  ethical  duties 
to  the  public  that  they  are  not  blind  devotees  of  an  industrial 
past  which  has  ceased  to  exist,  but  are  preparing  to  accept  the 
heavier  burdens  and  obligations  which  the  industrial  present 
carries  with  it. 

1  Passed  by  Congress  in  1890  "  to  protect  trade  and  commerce  against 
unlawful  restraints  and  monopolies."  —  Editors. 


XV 

THE    LABOR    QUESTION    FROM    THE 
SOCIALIST    STANDPOINT 

William  Morris 

[William  Morris  (1834-1896)  as  a  man  of  letters  was  distinguished  for  his 
interest  in  the  revival  of  medieval  romanticism.  In  his  pubUc  life  he  was 
probably  still  more  widely  known  as  a  sympathetic  and  practical  philanthro- 
pist, and  a  remarkably  gifted  designer,  craftsman,  and  printer  of  exquisite 
books.  His  social  views  embrace  the  belief  that  much  of  the  sordidness 
and  misery  occasioned  by  our  modern  industrial  system  may  be  eUminated 
by  a  benevolent  socialism,  and  that  the  gradual  return  of  simpler  conditions 
of  Hfe  and  a  more  sincere  attitude  toward  the  question  of  class  relationships 
will  revive  in  man  a  dignified  personal  interest  in  the  labor  of  his  hands.  In 
this  connection  he  defines  his  conception  of  art:  "The  thing  which  I  un- 
derstand by  real  art  is  the  expression  by  man  of  his  pleasure  in  labor.  I 
do  not  believe  he  can  be  happy  in  his  labor  without  expressing  that  hap- 
piness." It  is  a  point  of  importance  that  his  interest  in  sociahstic  theories 
was  the  outgrowth  of  his  study  of  medieval  art,  and  of  the  social  condi- 
tions which  produced  it.  Morris  stands  with  John  Ruskin  not  as  a  skilled 
economic  theorist,  but  as  the  exponent  of  a  generous  and  enlightened  hu- 
manitarianism. 

The  Labor  Question  from  the  Socialist  Standpoint,  which  is  one  of  Morris's 
numerous  addresses  on  socialistic  topics,  was  delivered  as  a  lecture  in  Scot- 
land in  1886,  and  was  printed  in  Edinburgh  as  a  penny  pamphlet  in  the  same 
year.  The  lecture  is  a  criticism  of  the  oppressive  tendencies  of  modern  com- 
mercialism, and  not  an  attempt  to  formulate  a  program  of  amelioration.] 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  give  you  the  socialist  view  on  the  la- 
bor question.  Now,  in  some  ways  that  is  a  difficult  matter  to 
deal  with  —  far  beyond  my  individual  capacities  —  and  would 
also  be  a  long  business  ;  yet  in  another  way,  as  a  matter  of  prin- 
ciple, it  is  not  difficult  to  understand  or  long  to  tell  of,  and  it 
does  not  need  previous  study  or  acquaintance  with  the  works 

430 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    431 

of  specialists  or  philosophers.  Indeed,  if  it  did,  it  would  not 
be  a  political  subject,  and  I  hope  to  show  you  that  it  is  preemi- 
nently political  in  the  sense  in  which  I  should  use  the  word ;  that 
is  to  say,  that  it  is  a  matter  which  concerns  every  one,  and  has 
to  do  with  the  practical  everyday  relations  of  his  life,  and  that 
not  only  as  an  individual,  but  as  a  member  of  a  body  corporate, 
nay,  as  a  member  of  that  great  corporation  —  humanity.  Thus 
considered,  it  would  be  hard  indeed  if  it  could  not  be  understood 
readily  by  a  person  of  ordinary  intelligence  who  can  bring  his 
mind  to  bear  upon  prejudice.  Such  a  person  can  learn  the  basis 
of  the  opinion  in  even  an  hour's  talk,  if  the  matter  be  clearly 
put  before  him :  it  is  my  task  to  attempt  this ;  and  whether  I 
fail  or  succeed,  I  can  at  least  promise  you  to  use  no  technical 
phrases  wTiich  would  require  explanation ;  nor  will  I,  as  far  as 
I  can  help,  go  into  any  speculative  matter,  but  will  be  as  plain 
and  practical  as  I  can  be. 

Yet  I  must  warn  you  that  you  may  be  disappointed  when  you 
find  that  I  have  no  elaborate  plan,  no  details  of  a  new  society  to 
lay  before  you,  that  to  my  mind  to  attempt  this  would  be  put- 
ting before  you  a  mere  delusion.  What  I  ask  you  to  consider 
is  in  the  main  the  clearing  away  of  certain  obstacles  that  stand 
in  the  way  of  the  due  and  unwasteful  use  of  labor  —  a  task  not 
light,  indeed,  nor  to  be  accompHshed  without  the  most  strenu- 
ous effort  in  the  teeth  of  violent  resistance,  but  yet  not  impos- 
sible for  humanity  as  we  know  it,  and,  as  I  firmly  believe,  not 
only  necessary,  but  as  things  now  are,  the  one  thing  essential  to 
be  undertaken. 

Now,  you  all  know  that,  taking  mankind  as  a  whole,  it  is 
necessary  for  man  to  labor  in  order  to  live.  Certainly  not  all 
things  that  we  enjoy  are  the  works  of  man's  labor ;  the  beauty 
of  the  earth,  and  the  action  of  nature  on  our  sensations,  are 
always  here  for  us  to  enjoy,  but  we  can  only  do  so  on  the  terms 
of  our  keeping  ourselves  alive  and  in  good  case  by  means  of 
labor,  and  no  inventions  can  set  aside  that  necessity.  The 
merest  savage  has  to  pluck  the  berry  from  the  tree,  or  dig  up 
the  root  from  the  ground  before  he  can  enjoy  his  dog-like  sleep 


432  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

in  sun  or  shade;  and  there  are  no  savages  who  have  not  got 
beyond  that  stage,  while  the  progressive  races  of  mankind  have 
for  many  ages  got  a  very  long  way  beyond  it,  so  that  we  have  no 
record  of  any  time  when  they  had  not  formed  some  sort  of  society, 
whose  aim  was  to  make  the  struggle  with  nature  for  subsistence 
less  hard  than  it  otherwise  would  have  been,  to  win  a  more 
abundant  livelihood  from  her. 

We  cannot  deal  at  any  length  with  the  historical  development 
of  society;  our  object  is  simply  to  inquire  into  the  constitution 
of  that  final  development  of  society  under  which  we  live.  But 
one  may  first  ask  a  few  questions :  first,  since  the  community 
generally  must  labor  in  order  that  the  individuals  composing  it 
may  subsist,  and  labor  harder  in  order  that  they  may  attain 
further  advantages,  ought  not  a  really  successful  community  so 
to  arrange  that  labor  that  each  capable  person  should  do  a  fair 
share  of  it  and  no  more  ?  Second,  should  not  a  really  successfid 
community  —  established  surely  for  the  benefit  of  all  its  mem- 
bers —  arrange  that  every  one  who  did  his  due  share  of  labor 
should  have  his  due  share  of  the  wealth  earned  by  that  labor  ? 
Third,  if  any  labor  was  wasted,  such  waste  would  throw  an 
additional  burden  on  those  who  produced  what  was  necessary 
and  pleasant  to  existence.  Should  not  a  successful  community, 
therefore,  so  organize  its  labor  that  it  should  not  be  wasted? 
You  must  surely  answer  "Yes"  to  each  of  these  three  questions. 
I  will  assert,  then,  that  a  successful  society  —  a  society  which 
fulfilled  its  true  functions  —  would  take  care  that  each  did  his 
due  share  of  labor,  that  each  had  his  due  share  of  wealth  result- 
ing from  that  labor,  and  that  the  labor  of  persons  generally  was 
not  wasted.  I  ask  you  to  remember  those  three  essentials  of  a 
successful  society  throughout  all  that  follows,  and  now  to  let  me 
apply  them  as  a  test  of  success  to  that  society  in  which  we  live, 
the  latest  development  of  so  many  ages  of  the  struggle  with 
nature,  our  elaborate  and  highly  organized  civilization. 

In  our  society,  does  each  capable  person  do  his  fair  share  of 
labor  ?  Is  his  share  of  the  wealth  produced  proportionate  to  his 
labor  ?     Is  the  waste  of  labor  avoided  in  our  society  ? 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT   433 

You  may,  perhaps,  hesitate  in  your  answer  to  the  third  ques- 
tion ;  you  cannot  hesitate  to  say  "  No  "  to  the  two  first.  I  think, 
however,  I  shall  be  able  to  show  you  that  much  labor  is  wasted, 
and  that,  therefore,  our  society  fails  in  the  three  essentials  neces- 
sary for  a  successful  society.  Our  civilization,  therefore,  though 
elaborate  and  highly  organized,  is  a  failure ;  that  is,  supposing 
it  to  be  the  final  development  of  society,  as  some  people,  nay, 
most  people,  suppose  it  to  be. 

Now  a  few  words  as  to  the  course  of  events  which  have 
brought  us  to  the  society  of  the  present  day.  In  periods  almost 
before  the  dawn  of  continuous  history,  the  early  progressive 
races  from  which  we  are  descended  were  divided  into  clans  or 
families,  who  held  their  wealth,  such  as  it  was,  in  common  within 
the  clan,  while  all  outside  the  clan  was  hostile,  and  wealth  not 
belonging  to  the  clan  was  looked  upon  as  prize  of  war.  There 
was  consequently  continual  fighting  of  clan  with  clan,  and  at 
first  all  enemies  taken  in  war  were  slain ;  but  after  a  while,  as 
man  progressed  and  got  defter  with  his  hands,  and  learned  how 
to  make  more  effective  tools,  it  began  to  be  found  out  that,  so 
working,  each  man  could  do  more  than  merely  sustain  himself ; 
and  then  some  of  the  prisoners  of  war,  instead  of  being  slain  on 
the  field,  were  made  slaves  of;  they  had  become  valuable  for 
work,  Hke  horses.  Out  of  the  wealth  they  produced  their  mas- 
ters or  owners  gave  them  sustenance  enough  to  live  on  and  took 
the  rest  for  themselves.  Time  passed,  and  the  complexity  of 
society  grew,  the  early  barbarism  passed  through  many  stages 
into  the  ancient  civilizations,  of  which  Greece  and  Rome  were 
the  great  representatives ;  but  this  civilization  was  still  founded 
on  slave  labor;  most  of  its  wealth  was  created  by ^ men  who 
could  be  sold  in  the  market  like  cattle.  But  as  the  old  civili- 
zations began  to  decay,  this  slave  labor  became  unprofitable; 
the  countries  comprised  in  the  Roman  Empire  were  disturbed 
by  constant  war ;  the  governments,  both  central  and  provincial, 
became  mere  taxgathering  machines,  and  grew  so  greedy  that 
things  became  unbearable.  Society  became  a  mere  pretext  for 
taxgathering,  and  fell  to  pieces,  and  chattel  slavery  fell  with  it, 


434  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

since  under  all  these  circumstances  slaves  were  no  longer  valu- 
able. 

Then  came  another  change.     A  new  society  was  formed,  partly 
out  of  the  tribes  of  barbarians  who  had  invaded  the  Roman  Em- 
pire, and  partly  out  of  the  fragments  of  that  Empire  itself ;  the 
feudal  system  arose,  bearing  with  it  new  ideas,  which  I  have 
not  time  to  deal  with  here  and  now.     Suffice  it  to  say,  that  in 
its  early  days  mere  chattel  slavery  gave  place  to  serfdom.    Power- 
ful men,  privileged  men,  had  not  forgotten  that  men  can  produce 
more  by  a  day's  labor  than  will  keep  them  alive  for  a  day ;   so 
now  they  settled  their  laborers  on  certain  portions  of  land, 
stocked  their  land  with  them,  in  fact,  and  on  these  lands  they 
had  leave  to  live  as  well  as  they  might  on  the  condition  that  they 
should  work  a  certain  part  of  their  time  on  the  land  which  be- 
longed to  their  lords.     The  average  condition  of  these  serfs  was 
better  than  that  of  the  chattel  slaves.     They  could  not  be 
bought  and  sold  personally,  they  were  a  part  of  the  manor  on 
which  they  lived,  and  they  had  as  a  class  a  tendency  to  become 
tenants  by  various  processes.     In  one  way  or  another  these  serfs 
got  gradually  emancipated,  and  during  a  transitional  period,  last- 
ing through  the  two  last  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages,  the  four- 
teenth and  fifteenth  centuries,  the  labor  classes  were  in  a  far 
better  position  than  they  had  been  before,  and  in  some  ways 
than  they  have  been  since,  suffering  more  from  spasmodic  arbi- 
trary violence  than  from  chronic  legal  oppression.     The  tran- 
sition from  this  period  to  our  own  days  is  one  of  the  most  in- 
teresting chapters  of  history;    but  it  is  impossible  for  me  to 
touch  on  it  here.     All  I  can  say  is,  that  the  emancipated  serfs 
formed  one  of  the  elements  that  went  to  make  up  our  present 
middle  cl^ss,  and  that  a  new  class  of  workers  grew  up  beneath 
them  —  men  who  were  not  owned  by  any  one,  who  were  bound 
by  no  legal  ties  to  such  and  such  a  manor,  who  might  earn  what 
livelihood  they  could  for  themselves  under  certain  conditions, 
which  I  will  presently  try  to  lay  before  you,  and  which  are  most 
important  to  be  considered,  for  this  new  class  of  so-called  free 
laborers  has  become  our  modern  working  class. 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    435 

Now  it  will  be  clear  to  you,  surely,  how  much  and  how  griev- 
ously both  the  classical  period,  with  its  chattel  slavery,  and  the 
feudal  system,  with  its  serfdom,  fell  short  of  the  society  which 
we  have  set  before  us  as  reasonably  successful.  In  each  of  them 
there  was  a  class  obviously  freed  from  the  necessity  of  labor,  by 
means  of  the  degradation  of  another  class  which  labored  exces- 
sively and  reaped  but  a  small  reward  for  its  excessive  labor. 
Surely  there  was  something  radically  wrong  in  these  two  societies. 
From  the  fact  that  labor  is  necessary  for  man's  life  on  the  earth, 
and  that  nature  yields  her  abundance  to  labor  only,  one  would 
be  inclined  to  deduce  the  probability  that  he  who  worked  most 
would  be  the  best  off ;  but  in  these  slave  and  serf  societies  the 
reverse  was  the  case :  the  man  of  leisureless  toil  lived  miserably, 
the  man  who  did  nothing  useful  lived  abundantly.  Then,  again, 
as  to  our  third  test,  was  there  no  waste  of  labor  ?  Yes,  indeed, 
there  was  waste  most  grievous.  I  have  said  that  the  slave  owner 
or  the  lord  of  the  manor  did  nothing  useful,  and  yet  he  did  some- 
thing —  he  was  bound  to  do  something,  for  he  was  often  ener- 
getic, gifted,  and  full  of  character  —  he  made  war  ceaselessly, 
consuming  thereby  the  wealth  which  his  slaves  or  his  serfs 
created,  and  forcing  them  to  work  the  more  grievously.  Here 
was  waste  enough,  and  lack  of  organization  of  labor. 

Well,  all  this  people  found  no  great  difhculty  in  seeing,  and 
few  would  like,  publicly  at  least,  to  confess  a  regret  for  these 
conditions  of  labor,  although  in  private  some  men,  less  hypo- 
critical or  more  logical  than  the  bulk  of  reactionists,  admit  that 
they  consider  the  society  of  cultivated  men  and  chattel  slaves  the 
best  possible  for  weak  human  nature.  Yet  though  we  can  see 
what  has  been,  we  cannot  so  easily  see  what  is ;  and  I  admit 
that  it  is  especially  hard  for  people  in  our  civilization,  with  its 
general  freedom  from  the  ruder  forms  of  violence,  its  orderly 
routine  life,  and,  in  short,  all  that  tremendous  organization  whose 
very  perfection  of  continuity  prevents  us  from  noticing  it,  —  I 
say  it  is  hard  for  people  under  the  quiet  order  and  external  sta- 
bility of  modern  society  to  note  that  much  the  same  thing  is 
going  on  in  the  relations  of  employers  to  the  employed,  as  went 


436  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

on  under  the  slave  society  of  Athens,  or  under  the  serf-sustained 
baronage  of  the  thirteenth  century. 

For  I  assert  that  with  us,  as  with  the  older  societies,  those  who 
work  hardest  fare  the  worst,  those  who  produce  the  least  get 
the  most ;  while  as  to  the  waste  of  labor  that  goes  on,  the  waste 
of  times  past  is  as  nothing  compared  with  what  is  wasted 
to-day. 

I  must  now  justify  this  view  of  mine,  and  if  possible  get  you 
to  agree  with  it,  by  pointing  out  to  you  how  society  at  the  pres- 
ent day  is  constituted. 

Now,  as  always,  there  are  only  two  things  essential  to  the 
production  of  wealth  —  labor  and  raw  material ;  every  one  can 
labor  who  is  not  sick  or  in  nonage  ;  therefore  every  one,  except 
those,  if  he  can  get  at  raw  material,  can  produce  wealth;  but 
without  that  raw  material  he  cannot  produce  anything  —  any- 
thing, that  is,  that  man  can  live  upon  ;  and  if  he  does  not  labor, 
he  must  live  at  the  expense  of  those  that  do ;  unless,  therefore, 
every  one  can  get  at  the  raw  material  and  instruments  of  produc- 
tion, the  community  in  general  will  be  burdened  by  the  expense 
of  so  many  useless  mouths,  and  the  sum  of  its  wealth  will  be 
less  than  it  ought  to  be.  But  in  our  civilized  society  of  to-day 
the  raw  material  and  the  instruments  of  production  are  monopo- 
lized by  a  comparatively  small  number  of  persons,  who  will  not 
allow  the  general  population  to  use  them  for  production  of  wealth 
unless  they  pay  them  tribute  for  doing  so ;  and  since  they  are 
able  to  exact  this  tribute,  they  themselves  are  able  to  live  with- 
out producing,  and  consequently  are  a  burden  on  the  community. 
Nor  are  these  monopolists  content  with  exacting  a  bare  liveli- 
hood from  the  producers,  as  mere  vagabonds  and  petty  thieves 
do ;  they  are  able  to  get  from  the  producers  in  all  cases  an  abun- 
dant livelihood,  including  most  of  the  enjoyments  and  advantages 
of  civilization,  and  in  many  cases  a  position  of  such  power  that 
they  are  practically  independent  of  the  community,  and  almost 
out  of  reach  of  its  laws  —  although,  indeed,  the  greater  part  of 
those  laws  were  made  for  the  purpose  of  upholding  this  monopoly 
—  and  wherever  necessary  they  do  now  use  the  physical  force, 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    437 

which  by  one  means  or  another  they  have  under  their  control, 
for  such  upholding. 

These  monopolists,  or  capitalists,  as  one  may  call  them  broadly 
(for  I  will  not  at  present  distinguish  the  land  capitalists  from  the 
money  capitalists),  are  in  much  the  same  position  as  the  slave 
owners  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  or  the  serf  masters  of  the 
thirteenth  century;  but  they  have  this  advantage  over  them, 
that  though  really  they  sustain  their  position  by  mere  compul- 
sion, just  as  the  earlier  masters  did,  that  compulsion  is  not  visible 
as  the  compulsion  of  the  earlier  times  was,  and  it  is  very  much 
their  business  to  prevent  it  becoming  visible,  as  may  be  well 
imagined.  But  as  I  am  against  monopoly  and  in  favor  of  free- 
dom, I  must  try  to  get  you  to  see  it ;  since  seeing  it  is  the  first 
step  towards  feeling  it,  which  in  its  turn  is  sure  to  lead  to  your 
refusing  to  bear  it. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  tribute  which  the  capitalists  exact  as  the 
price  of  the  use  of  those  means  of  production  which  ought  to  be 
as  free  to  all  as  the  air  we  breathe  is,  since  they  are  as  necessary 
to  our  existence  as  it  is.  How  do  they  exact  the  tribute  ?  They 
are,  to  start  with,  in  a  good  position,  you  see,  because,  even  with- 
out any  one's  help,  they  could  use  the  labor  power  in  their  own 
bodies  on  the  raw  material  they  have,  and  so  earn  their  liveli- 
hood ;  but  they  are  not  content  with  that,  as  I  hinted  above  — 
they  are  not  likely  to  be,  because  their  position,  legalized  and 
supported  by  the  whole  physical  force  of  the  state,  enables  them 
"to  do  better  for  themselves,"  as  the  phrase  goes  —  they  can 
use  the  labor  power  of  the  disinherited,  and  force  them  to  keep 
them  without  working  for  production.  Those  disinherited,  how- 
ever, they  must  keep  alive  to  labor,  and  they  must  allow  them 
also  opportunity  for  breeding  —  these  are  necessities  that  pressed 
equally  on  the  ancient  slave  owner  or  the  medieval  lord  of  the 
manor,  or,  indeed,  on  the  owner  of  draft  cattle ;  they  must  at 
least  do  for  the  workers  as  much  as  for  a  machine,  supply  them 
with  fuel  to  enable  them  to  work ;  nor  need  they  do  more  if 
they  are  dealing  with  men  who  have  no  power  of  resistance. 
But  these  machines  are  human  ones,  instinct  with  desires  and 


438  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

passions,  and  therefore  they  cannot  help  trying  to  better  them- 
selves ;  and  they  cannot  better  themselves  except  at  the  expense 
of  the  masters,  because  whatever  they  produce  more  than  the 
bare  necessaries  of  life  the  masters  will  at  once  take  from  them 
if  they  can;  therefore  they  have  always  resisted  the  full  exer- 
cise of  the  privilege  of  the  masters,  and  have  tried  to  raise  their 
standard  of  livelihood  above  the  mere  subsistence  limit.  Their 
resistance  has  taken  various  forms,  from  peaceful  strikes  to  open 
war,  but  it  has  always  been  going  on,  and  the  masters,  when  not 
driven  into  a  corner,  have  often  yielded  to  it,  although  unwillingly 
enough ;  but  it  must  be  said  that  mostly  the  workers  have 
claimed  little  more  than  mere  slaves  Would,  who  might  mutiny 
for  a  bigger  ration.  For,  in  fact,  this  wage  paid  by  our  modern 
masters  is  nothing  more  than  the  ration  of  the  slave  in  another 
form ;  and  when  the  masters  have  paid  it,  they  are  free  to  use 
all  the  rest  that  the  workers  produce,  just  as  the  slave  owner 
takes  all  that  the  slave  produces.  Remember  at  this  point, 
therefore,  that  everything  more  than  bare  subsistence  which  the 
workers  make  to-day,  they  make  by  carrying  on  constant  war 
with  their  masters.  I  must  add  that  their  success  in  this  war 
is  often  more  apparent  than  real,  and  too  often  it  means  little 
more  than  shifting  the  burden  of  extreme  poverty  from  one 
group  of  the  workers  to  another;  the  unskilled  laborers,  of 
whom  the  supply  is  unlimited,  do  not  gain  by  it,  and  their  num- 
bers have  a  tendency  to  increase,  as  the  masters,  driven  to  their 
shifts,  use  more  and  more  elaborate  machines  in  order  to  dis- 
pense with  the  skilled  labor,  and  also  use  the  auxihary  labor  of 
women  and  children,  to  whom  they  do  not  pay  subsistence  wages, 
thereby  keeping  down  the  wages  of  the  head  of  the  family,  and 
depriving  him  and  them  of  the  mutual  help  and  comfort  in  the 
household,  which  would  otherwise  be  gained  from  them. 

Thus,  then,  the  capitalists,  by  means  of  their  monopoly  of  the 
means  of  production,  compel  the  worker  to  work  for  less  than 
his  due  share  of  the  wealth  which  he  produces,  —  that  is,  for 
less  than  he  produces  ;  he  must  work,  he  will  die  else,  and  as  they 
are  in  possession  of  the  raw  material,  he  must  agree  to  the  terms 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    439 

they  enforce  upon  him.  This  is  the  "free  contract"  of  which  we 
hear  so  much,  and  which,  to  speak  plainly,  is  a  capitalist  lie. 
There  is  no  way  out  of  this  freedom  save  rebellion  of  some  kind 
or  other  —  strike  rebellion,  which  impoverishes  the  workers  for 
the  time,  whether  they  win  the  strike  or  lose  it ;  or  the  rebellion 
of  open  revolt,  which  will  be  put  down  always,  until  it  is  organ- 
ized for  a  complete  change  in  the  basis  of  society. 

Now  to  show  you  another  link  or  two  of  the  chain  which  binds 
the  workers.  There  is  one  thing  which  hampers  this  constant 
struggle  of  the  workers  towards  bettering  their  condition  at  the 
expense  of  their  masters,  and  that  is  competition  for  livelihood 
amongst  them.  I  have  told  you  that  unskilled  labor  is  practi- 
cally unlimited ;  and  machines,  the  employment  of  women  and 
children,  long  hours  of  work,  and  all  that  cheapening  of  produc- 
tion so  much  bepraised  now,  bring  about  this  state  of  things, 
that  even  in  ordinary  years  there  are  more  hands  than  there  is 
work  to  give  them.  This  is  the  great  instrument  of  compulsion 
of  modern  monopoly ;  people  undersell  one  another  in  our  mod- 
ern slave  market,  so  that  the  employers  have  no  need  to  use  any 
visible  instrument  of  compulsion  in  driving  them  towards  work ; 
and  the  invisibility  of  this  whip  —  the  fear  of  death  by  starva- 
tion —  has  so  muddled  people's  brains,  that  you  may  hear  men, 
otherwise  intelligent,  e.g.,  answering  objections  to  the  uselessness 
of  some  occupation  by  saying,  "But,  you  see,  it  gives  people 
employment,"  although  they  would  be  able  to  see  that  if  three 
of  them  had  to  dig  a  piece  of  ground,  and  one  of  them  knocked 
off,  and  was  "employed"  in  throwing  chuckle  stones  into  the 
water,  the  other  two  would  have  to  do  his  share  of  the  work  as 
well  as  their  own. 

Another  invisible  link  of  the  chain  is  this,  that  the  workman 
does  not  really  know  his  own  master ;  the  individual  employer 
may  be,  and  often  is,  on  good  terms  with  his  men,  and  really  un- 
conscious of  the  war  between  them,  although  he  cannot  fail  to 
know  that  if  he  pays  more  wages  to  his  men  than  other  employers 
in  the  same  line  of  business  as  himself  do,  he  will  be  beaten  by 
them.     But  the  workman's  real  master  is  not  his  immediate  em- 


440  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

ployer,  but  his  class,  which  will  not  allow  even  the  best-inten- 
tioned  employer  to  treat  his  men  otherwise  than  as  profit-grind- 
ing machines.  By  his  profit,  made  out  of  the  unpaid  labor  of 
his  men,  the  manufacturer  must  live,  unless  he  gives  up  his  po- 
sition and  learns  to  work  like  one  of  his  own  men,  which,  indeed, 
as  a  rule  he  could  not  do,  as  he  has  usually  not  been  taught  to 
do  any  useful  work ;  therefore,  as  I  have  said,  he  must  reduce 
his  wages  to  the  lowest  point  he  can,  since  it  is  on  the  margin 
between  his  men's  production  and  their  wages  that  his  profit  de- 
pends ;  his  class,  therefore,  compels  him  to  compel  his  workmen 
to  accept  as  little  as  possible.  But  further,  the  workman  is  a 
consumer  as  well  as  a  producer ;  and  in  that  character  he  has 
not  only  to  pay  rent  to  a  landlord  (and  far  heavier  proportion- 
ately than  rich  people  have  to  pay),  and  also  a  tribute  to  the 
middleman  who  lives  without  producing  and  without  doing  serv- 
ice to  the  community,  by  passing  money  from  one  pocket  to 
another,  but  he  also  has  to  pay  (as  consumer)  the  profits  of  the 
other  manufacturers  who  superintend  the  production  of  the 
goods  he  uses.  Again,  as  a  mere  member  of  society,  a  should-be 
citizen,  he  has  to  pay  taxes,  and  a  great  deal  more  than  he  thinks ; 
he  has  to  pay  for  wars,  past,  present,  and  future,  that  are  never 
meant  to  benefit  him,  but  to  force  markets  for  his  masters,  nay, 
to  keep  him  from  rebellion,  from  taking  his  own  at  some  date ; 
he  has  also  to  pay  for  the  thousand  and  one  idiocies  of  parlia- 
mentary government,  and  ridiculous  monarchical  and  official 
state  —  for  the  mountain  of  precedent,  nonsense,  and  chicanery, 
with  Us  set  of  officials,  whose  business  it  is,  under  the  name  of 
law,  to  prevent  justice  being  done  to  any  one.  In  short,  in  one 
way  or  another,  when  he  has  by  dint  of  constant  labor  got  his 
wages  into  his  pocket,  he  has  them  taken  away  from  him  again 
by  various  occult  methods,  till  it  comes  to  this  at  last,  that  he 
really  works  an  hour  for  one  third  of  an  hour's  pay ;  while  the 
two  thirds  go  to  those  who  have  not  produced  the  wealth  which 
they  consume. 

Here,  then,  as  to  the  first  and  second  conditions  of  a  reason- 
able society:    (i)  That  the  labor  should  be  duly  apportioned; 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    441 

(2)  that  the  wealth  should  be  duly  apportioned.  Our  society 
does  not  merely  fail  in  them,  but  positively  inverts  them ;  with 
us,  those  who  consume  most  produce  least,  those  who  produce 
most  consume  least. 

There  yet  remains  something  to  be  said  on  the  third  condition 
of  a  fair  state  of  society :  that  it  should  look  to  it  that  labor  be 
not  wasted.  How  does  civilization  fare  in  this  respect  ?  I  have 
told  you  what  was  the  occupation  of  the  ancient  slaveholders, 
set  free  by  slave  labor  from  the  necessity  of  producing  —  it  was 
fighting  with  each  other  for  the  aggrandizement,  in  earlier  times 
of  their  special  city,  in  later  of  their  own  selves;  similarly,  the 
medieval  baron,  set  free  from  the  necessity  of  producing  by  the 
labor  of  the  serfs  who  tilled  his  lands  for  him,  occupied  himself 
with  fighting  for  more  serf-tilled  land  either  for  himself  or  for 
his  suzerain.  In  our  own  days  we  see  that  there  is  a  class  freed 
from  the  necessity  of  producing  by  the  tribute  paid  by  the  wage 
earner.  What  does  our  free  class  do  ?  how  does  it  occupy  the 
lifelong  leisure  which  it  forces  toil  to  yield  to  it  ? 

Well,  it  chiefly  occupies  itself  in  war,  like  those  earlier  non- 
producing  classes,  and  very  busy  it  is  over  it.  I  know,  indeed, 
that  there  is  a  certain  portion  of  the  dominant  class  that  does 
not  pretend  to  do  anything  at  all,  except  perhaps  a  little  amateur 
reactionary  legislation,  yet  even  of  that  group  I  have  heard  that 
some  of  them  are  very  busy  in  their  estate  offices  trying  to  make 
the  most  of  their  special  privilege,  the  monopoly  of  the  land; 
and,  taking  them  altogether,  they  are  not  a  very  large  class.  Of 
the  rest  some  are  busy  in  taxing  us  and  repressing  our  liberties 
directly,  as  officers  in  the  army  and  navy,  magistrates,  judges, 
barristers,  and  lawyers ;  they  are  the  salaried  officers  on  the  part 
of  the  masters  in  the  great  class  struggle.  Other  groups  there 
are,  as  artists  and  literary  men,  doctors,  schoolmasters,  etc., 
who  occupy  a  middle  position  between  the  producers  and  the 
nonproducers ;  they  are  doing  useful  service,  and  ought  to  be 
doing  it  for  the  community  at  large,  but  practically  they  are 
only  working  for  a  class,  and  in  their  present  position  are  little 
better  than  hangers-on  of  the  nonproducing  class  from  whom 


442  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

they  receive  a  share  of  their  privilege,  together  with  a  kind  of 
contemptuous  recognition  of  their  position  as  gentlemen  — 
heaven  save  the  mark  !  But  the  great  mass  of  the  nonproduc- 
ing  classes  are  certainly  not  idle  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word ; 
they  could  not  be,  for  they  include  men  of  great  energy  and  force 
of  character,  who  would,  as  all  reasonable  men  do,  insist  on  some 
serious  or  exciting  occupation ;  and  I  say  once  again  their  occu- 
pation is  war,  though  it  is  ''writ  large,"  and  called  competition. 
They  are,  it  is  true,  called  organizers  of  labor ;  and  sometimes 
they  do  organize  it,  but  when  they  do  they  expect  an  extra  re- 
ward for  so  doing  outside  their  special  privilege.  A  great  many 
of  them,  though  they  are  engaged  in  the  war,  sit  at  home  at 
ease,  and  let  their  generals,  their  salaried  managers  to  wit,  wage 
it  for  them,  —  I  am  meaning  here  shareholders,  or  sleeping  part- 
ners, —  but  whenever  they  are  active  in  business  they  are  really 
engaged  in  organizing  the  war  with  their  competitors,  the  capital- 
ists in  the  same  line  of  business  as  themselves ;  and  if  they  are 
to  be  successful  in  that  war  they  must  not  be  sparing  of  destruc- 
tion, either  of  their  own  or  of  other  people's  goods ;  nay,  they 
not  unseldom  are  prepared  to  further  the  war  of  sudden,  as  op- 
posed to  that  of  lingering,  death,  and  of  late  years  they  have  in- 
volved pretty  nearly  the  whole  of  Europe  in  attacks  on  barbarian 
or  savage  peoples,  which  are  only  distinguishable  from  sheer 
piracy  by  their  being  carried  on  by  nations  instead  of  indi- 
viduals. But  all  that  is  only  by  the  way ;  it  is  the  ordinary  and 
necessary  outcome  of  their  operations  that  there  should  be  peri- 
odical slackness  of  trade  following  on  times  of  inflation,  from  the 
fact  that  every  one  tries  to  get  as  much  as  he  can  of  the  market 
to  himself  at  the  expense  of  every  one  else,  so  that  sooner  or 
later  the  market  is  sure  to  be  overstocked,  so  that  wares  are  sold 
sometimes  at  less  than  the  cost  of  production,  which  means  that 
so  much  labor  has  been  wasted  on  them  by  misdirection.  Nor 
is  that  all ;  for  they  are  obliged  to  keep  an  army  of  clerks  and 
such-like  people,  who  are  not  necessary  either  for  the  produc- 
tion of  goods  or  their  distribution,  but  are  employed  in  safe- 
guarding their  master's  interests  against  their  master's  com- 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    443 

petitors.  The  waste  is  further  increased  by  the  necessity  of 
these  organizers  of  the  commercial  war  for  playing  on  the  igno- 
rance and  gullibility  of  the  customers  by  two  processes,  which  in 
their  perfection  are  specialties  of  the  present  century,  and  even, 
it  may  be  said,  of  this  latter  half  of  it  —  to  wit,  adulteration  and 
puffery.  It  would  be  hard  to  say  how  much  ingenuity  and  pains- 
taking have  been  wasted  on  these  incidents  in  the  war  of  com- 
merce, and  I  am  wholly  unable  to  get  any  statistics  of  them; 
but  we  all  know  that  an  enormous  amount  of  labor  is  spent  on 
them,  which  is  at  the  very  best  as  much  wasted  as  if  those  en- 
gaged on  it  were  employed  in  digging  a  hole  and  filling  it  up 
again. 

But,  further,  there  is  yet  another  source  of  waste  involved  in 
our  present  society.  The  grossly  unequal  distribution  of  wealth 
forces  the  rich  to  get  rid  of  their  surplus  money  by  means  of 
various  forms  of  folly  and  luxury,  which  means  further  waste  of 
labor.  Do  not  think  I  am  advocating  asceticism.  I  wish  us 
all  to  make  the  utmost  of  what  we  can  obtain  from  nature  to 
make  us  happier  and  more  contented  while  we  live ;  but,  apart 
from  reasonable  comfort  and  real  refinement,  there  is,  as  I  am 
sure  no  one  can  deny,  a  vast  amount  of  sham  wealth  and  sham 
service  created  by  our  miserable  system  of  rich  and  poor,  which 
makes  no  human  being  the  happier  on  the  one  hand,  while  on 
the  other  it  withdraws  vast  numbers  of  workers  from  the  pro- 
duction of  real  utilities,  and  so  casts  a  heavy  additional  burden 
of  labor  on  those  who  are  producing  them.  I  have  been  speak- 
ing hitherto  of  a  producing  and  a  nonproducing  class,  but  I 
have  been  quite  conscious  all  the  time  that  though  the  first  class 
produces  whatever  wealth  is  created,  a  very  great  many  of  them 
are  prevented  from  producing  wealth  at  all,  are  being  set  to 
nothing  better  than  turning  a  wheel  that  grinds  nothing  —  save 
their  own  lives.  Nay,  worse  than  nothing.  I  hold  that  this 
sham  wealth  is  not  merely  a  negative  evil  (I  mean  in  itself), 
but  a  positive  one.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  refined  society  of 
to-day  is  distinguished  from  all  others  by  a  kind  of  gloomy 
cowardice  —  a  stolid  but  timorous  incapacity  of  enjoyment, 


444  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

He  who  runs  may  read  the  record  of  the  unhappy  rich  not  less 
than  that  of  the  unhappy  poor,  in  the  futiHty  of  their  amuse- 
ments and  the  degradation  of  their  art  and  hterature. 

Well,  then,  the  third  condition  of  a  reasonable  society  is  vio- 
lated by  our  present  so-called  society ;  the  tremendous  activity, 
energy,  and  invention  of  modern  times  is  to  a  great  extent 
wasted;    the  monopolists  force  the  workers  to  waste  a  great 
part  of  their  labor  power,  while  they  waste  almost  the  whole  of 
theirs.     Our  society,  therefore,  does  not  fulfill  the  true  functions 
of  society.     Now,  the  constitution  of  all  society  requires  that 
each  individual  member  of  it  should  yield  up  a  part  of  his  liberty 
in  return  for  the  advantages  of  mutual' help  and  defense;   yet 
at  bottom  that  surrender  should  be  part  of  the  liberty  itself; 
it  should  be  voluntary  in  essence.     But  if  society  does  not  fulfill 
its  duties  towards  the  individual,  it  wrongs  him ;   and  no  man 
voluntarily  submits  to  wrong  —  nay,  no  man  ought  to.     The 
society,  therefore,  that  has  violated  the  essential  conditions  of 
its  existence  must  be  sustained  by  mere  brute  force ;   and  that 
is  the  case  of  our  modern  society,  no  less  than  that  of  the  ancient 
slaveholding   and    the  medieval   serf-holding   societies.     As   a 
practical  deduction,  I  ask  you  to  agree  with  me  that  such  a 
society  should  be  changed  from  its  base  up,  if  it  be  possible. 
And,  further,  I  must  ask  how,  by  what,  and  by  whom,  such  a 
revolution  can  be  accomplished?     But  before  I  set  myself  to 
deal  with  these  questions,  I  will  ask  you  to  believe  that,  though 
I  have  tried  to  argue  the  matter  on  first  principles,  I  do  not  ap- 
proach the  subject  from  a  pedantic  point  of  view.     If  I  could 
believe  that,  however  wrong  it  may  be  in  theory,  our  present 
system  works  well  in  practice,  I  should  be  silenced.     If  I  thought 
that  its  wrongs  and  anomalies  were  so  capable  of  palliation,  that 
people  generally  were  not  only  contented  but  were  capable  of 
developing  their  human  faculties  duly  under  it,  and  that  we  were 
on  the  road  to  progress  without  a  great  change,  I  for  one  would 
not  ask  any  one  to  meddle  with  it.     But  I  do  not  believe  that, 
nor  do  I  know  of  any  thoughtful  person  that  does.     In  thought- 
ful persons  I  can  see  but  two  attitudes;   on  the  one  hand  the 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    445 

despair  of  pessimism,  which  I  admit  is  common,  and  on  the 
other  a  desire  and  hope  of  change.  Indeed,  in  a  year  Hke  the 
present,  when  one  hears  on  all  sides  and  from  all  classes  of  what 
people  call  depression  of  trade,  which,  as  we  too  well  know, 
means  misery  at  least  as  great  as  that  which  a  big  war  bears 
with  it ;  and  when  on  all  sides  there  is  ominous  grumbling  of 
the  coming  storm,  the  workers  unable  to  bear  the  extra  burden 
laid  upon  them  by  the  "bad  times,"  —  in  such  a  year  there  is, 
I  do  not  say  no  hope,  but  at  least  no  hope  except  in  those  changes, 
the  tokens  of  which  are  all  around  us. 

Therefore,  again  I  ask  how,  or  by  what,  or  by  whom,  the 
necessary  revolution  can  be  brought  about  ?  What  I  have  been 
saying  hitherto  has  been  intended  to  show  you  that  there  has 
always  been  a  great  class  struggle  going  on,  which  is  still  sus- 
tained by  our  class  of  monopoly  and  our  class  of  disinheritance. 
It  is  true  that  in  former  times  no  sooner  was  one  form  of  that 
class  struggle  over  than  another  took  its  place ;  but  in  our  days 
it  has  become  much  simplified,  and  has  cleared  itself  by  progress 
through  its  various  stages  of  mere  accidental  circumstances. 
The  struggle  for  political  equality  has  come  to  an  end,  or  nearly 
so;  all  men  are  (by  a  fiction,  it  is  true)  declared  to  be  equal 
before  the  law,  and  compulsion  to  labor  for  another's  benefit  has 
taken  the  simple  form  of  the  power  of  the  possessor  of  money, 
who  is  all-powerful ;  therefore  if,  as  we  socialists  believe,  it  is 
certain  that  the  class  struggle  must  one  day  come  to  an  end,  we 
are  so  much  nearer  to  that  end  by  the  passing  through  of  some 
of  its  necessary  stages ;   history  never  returns  on  itself. 

Now,  you  must  not  suppose,  therefore,  that  the  revolutionary 
struggle  of  to-day,  though  it  may  be  accompanied  (and  neces- 
sarily) by  violent  insurrection,  is  paralleled  by  the  insurrections 
of  past  times.  A  rising  of  the  slaves  of  the  ancient  period,  or 
of  the  serfs  of  the  medieval  times,  could  not  have  been  perma- 
nently successful,  because  the  time  was  not  ripe  for  such  success, 
because  the  growth  of  the  new  order  of  things  was  not  sufficiently 
developed.  It  is  indeed  a  terrible  thought  that,  although  the 
burden  of  injustice  and  suffering  was  almost  too  heavy  to  be 


446  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

borne  in  such  insurrectionary  times,  and  although  all  popular 
uprisings  have  right  on  their  side,  they  could  not  be  successful 
at  the  time,  because  there  was  nothing  to  put  in  the  place  of  the 
unjust  system  against  which  men  were  revolting.  And  yet  it  is 
true,  and  it  explains  the  fact  that  the  class  antagonism  is  generally 
more  felt  when  the  oppressed  class  is  bettering  its  condition  than 
when  it  is  at  its  worst.  The  consciousness  of  oppression  then 
takes  the  form  of  hope,  and  leads  to  action,  and  is,  indeed,  the 
token  of  the  gradual  formation  of  a  new  order  of  things  under- 
neath the  old  decaying  order. 

Most  thoughtful  people  are  conscious  of  the  fact  that  the  ten- 
dency of  the  times  is  to  make  the  labor  classes  the  great  power 
of  the  epoch,  in  the  teeth  of  the  other  fact  that  labor  is  at  least 
as  directly  under  the  domination  of  a  privileged  class  as  ever  it 
was.  Now  these  two  facts  taken  together  :  the  obvious  uprising 
of  the  workers  in  the  scale,  and  their  being  face  to  face  with  a 
class  that  lives  by  exploiting  their  labor,  —  these  two  facts  seem 
to  us  socialists  to  show  that  one  of  these  classes  must  give  way, 
and  that  this  giving  way  must  mean  that  one  of  those  classes 
must  be  absorbed  in  the  other,  and  so  the  class  war  be  ended. 
If  that  position  be  accepted,  it  is  clear  that  the  class  that  must 
come  alive  out  of  the  struggle  must  be  the  producing  class,  the 
useful  class ;  therefore  the  socialist's  view  of  the  labor  question 
is  that  a  new  society  is  in  course  of  development  from  the  work- 
ing classes  —  the  producing  classes,  more  properly  —  and  that 
the  other  classes  which  now  live  on  their  labor  will  melt  into 
that  class.  The  result  of  that  will  be,  that,  so  far  as  society  has 
any  conscious  organization,  it  will  be  an  instrument  for  the  ar- 
rangement of  labor  so  as  to  produce  wealth  from  natural  ma- 
terial, and  to  distribute  the.  wealth  when  produced  without  waste 
of  labor ;  that  is  to  say,  it  will  satisfy  those  ideal  conditions  of 
its  reason  for  existence  which  I  began  by  putting  before  you. 

I  told  you  that  I  was  not  prepared  to  give  you  any  details  of 
the  arrangement  of  a  new  state  of  society ;  but  I  am  prepared 
to  state  the  principles  on  which  it  would  be  founded,  and  the 
recognition  of  which  would  make  it  easy  for  serious  men  to  deal 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    447 

with  the  details  of  arrangement.  Socialism  asserts  that  every 
one  should  have  free  access  to  the  means  of  production  of  wealth 
—  the  raw  material  and  the  stored-up  force  produced  by  labor ; 
in  other  words,  the  land,  plant,  and  stock  of  the  community, 
which  are  now  monopohzed  by  certain  privileged  persons,  who 
force  others  to  pay  for  their  use.  This  claim  is  founded  on  the 
principle  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  socialism,  that  the  right 
to  the  possession  of  wealth  is  conferred  by  the  possessor  having 
worked  towards  its  production,  and  being  able  to  use  it  for  the 
satisfaction  of  his  personal  needs.  The  recognition  of  this  right 
will  be  enough  to  guard  against  mere  confusion  and  violence. 
The  claim  to  property  on  any  other  grounds  must  lead  to  what  is 
in  plain  terms  robbery ;  which  will  be  no  less  robbery  because  it 
is  organized  by  a  sham  society,  and  must  be  no  less  supported 
by  violence  because  it  is  carried  on  under  the  sanction  of  the  law. 

Let  me  put  this  with  somewhat  more  of  detail.  No  man  has 
made  the  land  of  the  country,  nor  can  he  use  more  than  a  small 
portion  of  it  for  his  personal  needs ;  no  man  has  made  more  than 
a  small  portion  of  its  fertility,  nor  can  use  personally  more  than 
a  small  part  of  the  results  of  the  labor  of  countless  persons,  liv- 
ing and  dead,  which  has  gone  to  produce  that  fertility.  No  man 
can  build  a  factory  with  his  own  hands,  or  make  the  machinery 
in  it,  nor  can  he  use  it,  except  in  combination  with  others.  He 
may  call  it  his,  but  he  cannot  make  any  use  of  it  as  his  alone, 
unless  he  is  able  to  compel  other  people  to  use  it  for  his  benefit ; 
this  he  does  not  do  personally,  but  our  sham  society  has  so  or- 
ganized itself  that  by  its  means  he  can  compel  this  unpaid  service 
from  others.  The  magistrate,  the  judge,  the  policeman,  and 
the  soldier,  are  the  sword  and  pistol  of  this  modern  highwayman, 
and  I  may  add  that  he  is  also  furnished  with  what  he  can  use  as  a 
mask  under  the  name  of  morals  and  religion. 

Now,  if  these  means  of  production  —  the  land,  plant,  and 
stock  —  were  really  used  for  their  primary  uses,  and  not  as 
means  for  extracting  unpaid  labor  from  others,  they  would  be 
used  by  men  working  in  combination  with  each  other,  each  of 
whom  would  receive  his  due  share  of  the  results  of  that  combined 


448  WILLIAM  MORRIS 

labor ;  the  only  difficulty  would  then  be  what  would  be  his  due 
share,  because  it  must  be  admitted  on  all  hands  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  know  how  much  each  individual  has  contributed  towards 
the  production  of  a  piece  of  cooperative  labor ;  but  the  prin- 
ciple once  granted  that  each  man  should  have  his  due  share  of 
what  he  has  created  by  his  labor,  the  solution  of  the  difficulty 
would  be  attempted,  nay,  is  now  hypothetically  attempted,  in 
various  ways,  in  two  ways  mainly.  One  view  is  that  the  state  — 
that  is,  society  organized  for  the  production  and  distribution  of 
wealth  —  would  hold  all  the  means  of  the  production  of  wealth 
in  its  hands,  allowing  the  use  of  them  to  whomsoever  it  thought 
could  use  them,  charging  rent,  perhaps,  for  their  use,  but  which 
rent  would  be  used  again  only  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole  com- 
munity, and  therefore  would  return  to  the  worker  in  another 
form.  It  would  also  take  on  itself  the  organization  of  labor  in 
detail,  arranging  the  how,  when,  and  where,  for  the  benefit  of  the 
public,  —  doing  all  this,  one  must  hope,  with  as  little  centrali- 
zation as  possible ;  in  short,  the  state,  according  to  this  view, 
would  be  the  only  employer  of  labor.  No  individual  would  be 
able  to  employ  a  workman  to  work  for  him  at  a  profit,  i.e.,  to  work 
for  less  than  the  value  of  his  labor  (roughly  estimated),  because 
the  state  would  pay  him  the  full  value  of  it ;  nor  could  any  man 
let  land  or  machinery  at  a  profit,  because  the  state  would  let  it 
without  the  profit.  It  is  clear  that  if  this  could  be  carried  out, 
no  one  could  five  without  working.  When  a  man  had  spent  the 
wealth  he  had  earned  personally,  he  would  have  to  work  for  more, 
as  there  would  be  no  tribute  coming  to  him  from  the  labor  of  past 
generations ;  on  these  terms  he  could  not  accumulate  wealth,  nor 
would  he  desire  to,  for  he  could  do  nothing  with  it  except  satisfy 
his  personal  needs  with  it,  whereas  at  present  he  can  turn  the 
superfluity  of  his  wealth  into  capital,  i.e.,  wealth  used  for  the 
extraction  of  profit.  Thus  society  would  be  changed.  Every 
one  would  have  to  work  for  his  livelihood,  and  everybody  would 
be  able  to  do  so ;  whereas  at  present  there  are  people  who  refuse 
to  work  for  their  livelihood,  and  forbid  others  to  do  so.  Labor 
would  not  be  wasted,  as  there  would  be  no  competing  employ- 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    449 

ers  gambling  in  the  market,  and  using  the  real  producer  and  the 
consumer  as  their  milch  cows.  The  limit  of  price  would  be  the 
cost  of  production,  so  that  buying  and  selling  would  be  simply  the 
exchange  of  equivalent  values,  and  there  would  be  no  loss  on 
either  side  in  the  transaction.  Thus  there  would  be  a  society 
in  which  every  one  would  have  an  equal  chance  for  well-doing, 
for,  as  a  matter  of  course,  arrangements  would  be  made  for  the 
sustaining  of  people  in  their  nonage,  for  keeping  them  in  comfort 
if  they  were  physically  incapacitated  from  working,  and  also  for 
educating  every  one  according  to  his  capacities.  This  would  at  the 
least  be  a  society  which  would  try  to  perform  those  functions  of 
seeing  that  every  one  did  his  due  share  of  work  and  no  more,  and 
had  his  due  share  of  wealth  and  no  less,  and  that  no  labor  was 
wasted,  which  I  have  said  were  the  real  functions  of  a  true  so- 
ciety. 

But  there  is  another  view  of  the  solution  of  the  difficulty  as  to 
what  constitutes  the  due  share  of  the  wealth  created  by  labor. 
Those  who  take  it  say,  since  it  is  not  really  possible  to  find  out 
what  proportion  of  combined  labor  each  man  contributes,  why 
profess  to  try  to  do  so  ?  In  a  properly  ordered  community  all 
work  that  is  done  is  necessary  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
there  would  be  plenty  of  wealth  in  such  a  community  to  satisfy 
all  reasonable  needs.  The  community  holds  all  wealth  in  com- 
mon, but  has  the  same  right  to  holding  wealth  that  the  individual 
has,  —  namely,  the  fact  that  it  has  created  it  and  uses  it ;  but  as  a 
community  it  can  only  use  wealth  by  satisfying  with  it  the  needs 
of  every  one  of  its  members  —  it  is  not  a  true  community  if  it 
does  less  than  this  —  but  their  needs  are  not  necessarily  de- 
termined by  the  kind  or  amount  of  work  which  each  man  does, 
though,  of  course,  when  they  are,  that  must  be  taken  into  ac- 
count. To  say  the  least  of  it,  men's  needs  are  much  more  equal 
than  their  mental  or  bodily  capacities  are ;  their  ordinary  needs, 
granting  similar  conditions  of  climate  and  the  like,  are  pretty 
much  the  same,  and  could,  as  above  said,  be  easily  satisfied.  As 
for  special  needs  for  wealth  of  a  more  special  kind,  reasonable 
men  would  be  contented  to  sacrifice  the  thing  which  they  needed 


450  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

less  for  that  which  they  needed  more ;  and  for  the  rest,  the  varie- 
ties of  temperament  would  get  over  the  difficulties  of  this  sort. 
As  to  the  incentives  to  work,  it  must  be  remembered  that  even 
in  our  own  sham  society  most  men  are  not  disinclined  to  work,  so 
only  that  their  work  is  not  that  which  they  are  compelled  to  do ; 
and  the  higher  and  more  intellectual  the  work  is,  the  more  men 
are  resolved  to  do  it,  even  in  spite  of  obstacles.  In  fact,  the  ideas 
on  the  subject  of  the  reward  of  labor  in  the  future  are  founded 
on  its  position  in  the  present.  Life  is  such  a  terrible  struggle  for 
the  majority,  that  we  are  all  apt  to  think  that  a  specially  gifted 
person  should  be  endowed  with  more  of  that  which  we  are  all 
compelled  to  struggle  for  —  money,  to  wit  —  and  to  value  his 
services  simply  by  that  standard.  But  in  a  state  of  society  in 
which  all  were  well-to-do,  how  could  you  reward  extra  services 
to  the  community?  Give  your  good  worker  immunity  from 
work?  The  question  carries  with  it  the  condemnation  of  the 
idea,  and,  moreover,  that  will  be  the  last  thing  he  will  thank  you 
for.  Provide  for  his  children  ?  The  fact  that  they  are  human 
beings  with  a  capacity  for  work  is  enough ;  they  are  provided  for 
in  being  members  of  a  community  which  will  see  that  they  neither 
lack  work  nor  wealth.  Give  him  more  wealth?  Nay;  what 
for  ?  What  can  he  do  with  more  than  he  can  use  ?  He  cannot 
eat  three  dinners  a  day,  or  sleep  in  four  beds.  Give  him  domina- 
tion over  other  men  ?  Nay,  if  he  be  more  excellent  than  they  are 
in  any  art,  he  must  influence  them  for  his  good  and  theirs,  if 
they  are  worth  anything ;  but  if  you  make  him  their  arbitrary 
master,  he  wiU  govern  them,  but  he  will  not  influence  them; 
he  and  they  will  be  enemies,  and  harm  each  other  mutually. 
One  reward  you  can  give  him,  that  is,  opportunity  for  developing 
his  special  capacity,  but  that  you  will  do  for  everybody  and  not 
the  excellent  only.  Indeed,  I  suppose  he  will  not,  if  he  be  ex- 
cellent, lack  the  admiration  —  or  perhaps  it  is  better  to  say  the 
affection  —  of  his  fellow  men,  and  he  will  be  all  the  more  likely 
to  get  that  when  the  relations  between  him  and  them  are  no 
longer  clouded  by  the  fatal  gift  of  mastership. 

In  short,  in  a  duly  ordered  community,  everybody  would  do 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    451 

what  he  could  do  best,  and  therefore  easiest,  and  with  most 
pleasure.  He  who  could  do  the  higher  work  would  do  it  as  easily 
as  the  man  whose  capacity  was  less  would  do  the  lower  work ; 
there  would  be  no  more  wear  and  tear  to  him  in  it,  or  if  there 
were,  it  would  mean  simply  that  his  needs  were  greater,  and  would 
have  to  be  considered  accordingly. 

Moreover,  those  who  see  this  view  of  the  new  society  believe 
that  decentralization  in  it  would  have  to  be  complete.  The 
political  unit  with  them  is  not  a  nation,  but  a  commune ;  the 
whole  of  reasonable  society  would  be  a  great  federation  of  such 
communes,  federated  for  definite  purposes  of  the  organization  of 
livelihood  and  exchange.  For  a  mere  nation  is  the  historical 
deduction  from  the  ancient  tribal  family,  in  which  there  was  peace 
between  the  individuals  composing  it,  and  war  with  the  rest  of 
the  world.  A  nation  is  a  body  of  people  kept  together  for  pur- 
poses of  rivalry  and  war  with  other  similar  bodies,  and  when 
competition  shall  have  given  place  to  combination  the  function 
of  the  nation  will  be  gone. 

I  will  recapitulate,  then,  the  two  views  taken  among  socialists 
as  to  the  future  of  society.  According  to  the  first,  the  state  — 
that  is,  the  nation  organized  for  unwasteful  production  and 
exchange  of  wealth  —  will  be  the  sole  possessor  of  the  national 
plant  and  stock,  the  sole  employer  of  labor,  which  she  will  so 
regulate  in  the  general  interest  that  no  man  will  ever  need  to  fear 
lack  of  employment  and  due  earnings  therefrom.  Everybody 
will  have  an  equal  chance  of  livelihood,  and,  except  as  a  rare  dis- 
ease, there  would  be  no  hoarding  of  money  or  other  wealth. 
This  view  points  to  an  attempt  to  give  everybody  the  full  worth 
of  the  productive  work  done  by  him,  after  having  insured  the 
necessary  preliminary  that  he  shall  always  be  free  to  work. 

According  to  the  other  view,  the  centralized  nation  would 
give  place  to  a  federation  of  communities  who  would  hold  all 
wealth  in  common,  and  would  use  that  wealth  for  satisfying  the 
needs  of  each  member,  only  exacting  from  each  that  he  should 
do  his  best  according  to  his  capacity  towards  the  production  of 
the  common  wealth.     Of  course,  it  is  to  be  understood  that  each 


452  WILLIAM   MORRIS 

member  is  absolutely  free  to  use  his  share  of  wealth  as  he  pleases 
without  interference  from  any,  so  long  as  he  really  uses  it;  that  is, 
does  not  turn  it  into  an  instrument  for  the  oppression  of  others. 
This  view  intends  complete  equality  of  condition  for  every  one, 
though  life  would  be,  as  always,  varied  by  the  differences  of  capac- 
ity and  disposition ;  and  emulation  in  working  for  the  common 
good  would  supply  the  place  of  competition  as  an  incentive. 

These  two  views  of  the  future  of  society  are  sometimes  opposed 
to  each  other  as  socialism  and  communism ;  but  to  my  mind  the 
latter  is  simply  the  necessary  developn^ent  of  the  former,  which 
implies  a  transition  period,  during  which  people  would  be  get- 
ting rid  of  the  habits  of  mind  bred  by  the  long  ages  of  tyranny  and 
commercial  competition,  and  be  learning  that  it  is  to  the  interest 
of  each  that  aU  should  thrive. 

When  men  had  lost  the  fear  of  each  other  engendered  by  our 
system  of  artificial  famine,  they  would  feel  that  the  best  way  of 
avoiding  the  waste  of  labor  would  be  to  allow  every  man  to  take 
what  he  needed  from  the  common  store,  since  he  would  have  no 
temptation  or  opportunity  of  doing  anything  with  a  greater  por- 
tion than  he  really  needed  for  his  personal  use.  Thus  would  be 
minimized  the  danger  of  the  community  falling  into  bureaucracy, 
the  multiplication  of  boards  and  offices,  and  all  the  paraphernalia 
of  official  authority,  which  is  after  all  a  burden,  even  when  it  is 
exercised  by  the  delegation  of  the  whole  people  and  in  accord- 
ance with  their  wishes. 

Thus  I  have  laid  before  you,  necessarily  briefly,  a  socialist's 
view  of  the  present  condition  of  labor,  and  its  hopes  for  the 
future.  If  the  indictment  against  the  present  society  seems  to 
you  to  be  of  undue  proportions  compared  with  the  view  of  that 
which  is  to  come,  I  must  again  remind  you  that  we  socialists 
never  dream  of  building  up  by  our  own  efforts  in  one  generation  a 
society  altogether  new.  All  I  have  been  attacking  has  been  the 
exercise  of  arbitrary  authority  for  the  supposed  benefit  of  a 
privileged  class.  When  we  have  got  rid  of  that  authority  and 
are  free  once  more,  we  ourselves  shall  do  whatever  may  be  neces- 
sary in  organizing  the  real  society  which  even  now  exists  under 


LABOR  QUESTION  FROM  SOCIALIST  STANDPOINT    453 

the  authority  which  usurps  that  title.  That  true  society  of 
loved  and  lover,  parent  and  child,  friend  and  friend,  the  society 
of  well-wishers,  of  reasonable  people  conscious  of  the  aspirations 
of  humanity  and  the  duties  we  owe  to  it  through  one  another,  — 
this  society,  I  say,  is  held  together  and  exists  by  his  own  inherent 
right  and  reason,  in  spite  of  what  is  usually  thought  to  be  the 
cement  of  society  —  arbitrary  authority  to  wit  —  that  is  to  say, 
the  expression  of  brute  force  under  the  influence  of  unreasoning 
habit.  Unhappily  though  society  exists,  it  is  in  an  enslaved  and 
miserable  condition,  because  that  same  arbitrary  authority  says 
to  us  practically :  "You  may  be  happy  if  you  can  afford  it,  but 
unless  you  have  a  certain  amount  of  money,  you  shall  not  be 
allowed  the  exercise  of  the  social  virtues ;  sentiment,  affection, 
good  manners,  intelligence  even,  to  you  shall  be  mere  words; 
you  shall  be  less  than  men,  because  you  are  needed  as  machines 
to  grind  on  in  a  system  which  has  come  upon  us,  we  scarce  know 
how,  and  which  compels  us,  as  well  as  you."  This  is  the  real, 
continuously  repeated  proclamation  of  law  and  order  to  the  most 
part  of  men  who  are  under  the  burden  of  that  hierarchy  of  com- 
pulsion which  governs  us  under  the  usurped  and  false  title  of 
society,  and  which  all  true  socialists  or  supporters  of  real  society 
are  bound  to  do  their  best  to  get  rid  of ,  so  as  to  leave  us  free  to 
realize  to  the  full  that  true  society  which  means  well-being  and 
well-doing  for  one  and  all. 


XVI 

EDUCATION   AND   THE   SOCIALIST 
MOVEMENT 1 

John  Bates  Clark 

[John  Bates  Clark  (1847-),  since  1895  professor  of  political  economy  in 
Columbia  University,  occupies  perhaps  the  foremost  position  among  Eng- 
lish-speaking economists  of  the  present  time.  Among  his  books  and  mon- 
ographs should  be  mentioned  his  epoch-making  work  on  the  Distribution  of 
Wealth  (1899),  which  ranks  among  the  ablest  contributions  to  economic 
philosophy  since  the  days  of  John  Stuart  Mill. 

While  always  a  theoretician,  Professor  Clark  has  shown  an  active  interest 
in  many  current  practical  problems;  this  is  exemplified  in  the  following 
essay  on  Education  and  the  Socialist  Movement,  a  clear-cut  presentation  of 
the  practical  objections  to  socialism  as  they  appear  to  the  scientifically  trained 
mind.  Among  the  many  analyses  and  refutations  of  the  claims  of  the  socialis- 
tic state,  this  essay  is  distinguished  for  its  lucid  argument,  its  moderate  tone, 
and  for  the  authority  with  which  its  author  may  speak  on  a  question  that 
must  still  be  argued  from  theory.  The  optimistic  attitude,  with  which  the 
essay  closes,  toward  the  tendencies  of  the  present  industrial  system  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  author's  position  on  economic  questions.] 

In  a  noteworthy  address  delivered  at  Princeton  University, 
President  Cleveland  expressed  the  hope  that  our  higher  institu- 
tions of  learning  would  range  themselves  like  a  wall  barring  the 
progress  of  revolutionary  doctrines.  If  one  may  judge  by  ap- 
pearances, this  hope  has  not  been  reaUzed.  There  may  be  a 
smaller  percentage  of  educated  persons  than  of  uneducated  ones 
in  the  ranks  of  radical  socialism.  Those  ranks  are  most  readily 
recruited  from  the  body  of  ill-paid  workingmen ;  but  there  are 
enough  highly  educated  persons  in  them  to  prove  that  socialism 
and  the  higher  culture  are  not  incompatible ;  and  a  question  that 

^  Reprinted  by  permission  from  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  October,  1906. 

454 


EDUCATION  AND   THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT      455 

is  well  worth  asking  and,  if  possible,  answering,  is,  What  is 
likely  to  be  the  permanent  attitude  of  a  scientific  mind  toward 
the  claims  of  thoroughgoing  socialism?  Will  it  be  generally 
conservative  or  the  opposite?  Will  there  be  an  alliance  be- 
tween intelligence  and  discontented  labor  —  the  kind  of  union 
that  was  once  cynically  called  a  "coalition  of  universities  and 
slums  "  ?     If  so,  it  will  make  a  formidable  party. 

It  is  clear,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  scientific  habit  of  thought 
makes  one  hospitable  to  new  ideas.  A  man  who  cultivates  that 
habit  is  open  to  conviction  where  an  ignorant  person  is  not  so. 
He  is  accustomed  to  pursue  the  truth  and  let  the  quest  lead  him 
where  it  will.  He  examines  evidence  which  appears  to  have  force, 
even  although  the  conclusion  to  which  it  leads  may  be  new  and 
unpleasant. 

Now,  at  the  very  outset  of  any  inquiry  about  socialism,  there 
appear  certain  undisputed  facts  which  create  a  prima  facie  case  in 
its  favor ;  and  the  first  of  them  is  the  beauty  of  the  ideal  which  it 
presents:  humanity  as  one  family;  men  working  together  as 
brethren,  and  enjoying,  share  and  share  alike,  the  fruits  of  their 
labor  —  what  could  be  more  attractive  ?  There  will  be  an  abun- 
dance for  every  one,  and  as  much  for  the  weak  as  for  the  strong ; 
and  there  will  be  no  cause  for  envy  and  repining.  There  will  be 
fraternity  insured  by  the  absence  of  subjects  of  contention.  We 
shall  love  our  brethren  because  we  shall  have  no  great  cause  to 
hate  them ;  such  is  the  picture.  We  raise  just  here  no  question 
as  to  the  possibility  of  realizing  it.  It  is  a  promised  land  and  not 
a  real  one  that  we  are  talking  about,  and  for  the  moment  we  have 
given  to  the  socialists  carte  blanche  to  do  the  promising.  The 
picture  that  they  hold  up  before  us  certainly  has  traits  of  beauty. 
It  is  good  and  pleasant  for  brethren  to  dwell  together  in  unity 
and  in  abundance. 

Again,  there  is  no  denying  the  imperfections  of  the  present 
system  both  on  its  ethical  and  on  its  economic  side.  There  is 
enormous  inequality  of  conditions  —  want  at  one  extreme  and 
inordinate  wealth  at  another.  Many  a  workingman  and  his 
family  are  a  prey  to  irregular  employment  and  continual  anxiety. 


456  JOHN  BATES   CLARK 

For  such  persons  what  would  not  a  leveling  out  of  inequalities 
do?     To  a  single  capitalist  personally  a  billion  dollars  would 
mean  palaces,  yachts,  and  a  regiment  of  retainers.     It  would 
mean  a  redoubling  of  his  present  profusion  of  costly  decorations, 
clothing,  and  furnishings,  and  it  would  mean  the  exhausting  of 
ingenuity  in  inventing  pleasures,  all  of  which,  by  a  law  of  human 
nature,  would  pall  on  the  man  from  mere  abundance.     What 
would  the  billionaire  lose  by  parting  with  ninety-nine  one  hun- 
dredths of  his  wealth  ?     With  the  modest  ten  millions  that  would 
be  left  he  could  have  every  pleasure  and  advantage  that  money 
ought  to  purchase.     What  would  not  the  sum  he  would  surrender 
do  for  a  hundred  thousand  laborers  and  their  families  ?     It  would 
provide  comforts  for  something  like  half  a  million  persons.     It 
would  give  them  means  of  culture  and  of  health,  banish  the 
hunger  specter,   and   cause  them  to  live  in   mental  security 
and  peace.     In  short,  at  the  cost  of  practically  nothing  for 
one  man,  the  redistribution  we  have  imagined  would  trans- 
late half  a  million  persons  to  a  comfortable  and  hopeful  level 
of  life. 

Again,  the  growth  of  those  corporations  to  which  we  give  the 
name  of  "trusts"  has  lessened  the  force  of  one  stock  argument 
against  socialism,  and  added  a  wholly  new  argument  in  its  favor. 
The  difficulty  of  managing  colossal  enterprises  formerly  stood 
in  many  minds  as  the  chief  consideration  against  nationalization 
of  capital  and  industry.  What  man,  or  what  body  of  men,  can 
possibly  be  wise  and  skillful  enough  to  handle  such  operations  ? 
They  are  now,  in  some  instances,  in  process  of  handling  them,  and 
those  who  wish  to  change  the  present  order  tell  us  that  all  we 
have  to  do  is  to  transfer  the  ownership  of  them  to  the  state,  and 
let  them  continue  working  as  they  do  at  present.  We  have  found 
men  wise  enough  to  manage  the  trusts,  and  probably,  in  most 
cases,  they  are  honest  enough  to  do  so  in  the  interest  of  the 
stockholders.  On  the  question  of  honesty  the  socialist  has  the 
advantage  in  the  argument,  for  he  will  tell  us  that  with  the  pri- 
vate ownership  of  capital  made  impossible  by  law,  the  tempta- 
tion to  dishonesty  is  removed.     If  the  sociaHstic  state  could  be 


EDUCATION  AND   THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT      457 

warranted  free  from  "graft,"  this  would  constitute  the  largest 
single  argument  in  its  favor. 

It  is,  indeed,  not  the  same  thing  to  manage  a  myriad  of  indus- 
tries as  to  manage  a  single  one,  because  certain  nice  adjustments 
have  to  be  made  between  the  several  industries,  and  we  shall  see 
what  this  difficulty  signifies  ;  but  as  we  are  looking  only  at  prima 
facie  claims,  we  will  give  to  the  argument  from  the  existence  of 
trusts  all  the  force  that  belongs  to  it. 

As  the  difficulty  of  nationalizing  production  has  been  reduced, 
the  need  of  it  has  been  increased,  for  the  trusts  are  becoming 
partial  monopolies,  able  to  raise  prices,  reduce  wages,  cheapen 
raw  materials,  and  make  themselves,  if  they  shall  go  much  farther 
in  this  line,  altogether  intolerable.  Indeed,  the  single  fact  of  the 
presence  of  private  monopoly,  and  the  lack  of  any  obvious  and 
sure  plan  of  successfully  dealing  with  it,  has  been  enough  to  con- 
vert a  multitude  of  intelligent  men  to  the  socialistic  view. 

Here,  then,  is  a  Hst  of  arguments  making  an  effective  case  for 
socialism :  the  beauty  of  its  ideal,  the  glaring  inequalities  of  the 
present  system,  the  reduction  of  the  difficulty  of  managing  great 
industries  through  public  officials,  the  growing  evils  of  private 
monopoly,  and  the  preference  for  pubhc  monopoly  as  a  mode  of 
escape.  They  captivate  a  multitude  of  persons,  and  it  is  time 
carefully  to  weigh  them.  It  is  necessary  to  decide  whether  the 
promises  of  the  sociaUstic  state  are  to  be  trusted.  Would  the 
ideal  materialize?  Is  it  a  substantial  thing,  within  reachable 
distance,  or  is  it  a  city  in  the  clouds  ?  If  it  is  not  wholly  away 
from  the  earth,  is  it  on  the  delectable  mountains  of  a  remote 
millennium  ?     Is  it  as  wholly  desirable  as  it  at  first  appears  ? 

There  are  some  considerations  which  any  educated  mind  should 
be  able  to  grasp,  which  reduce  the  attractiveness  of  the  socialistic 
ideal  itself.  Shall  we  transform  humanity  into  a  great  band  of 
brethren  by  abolishing  private  property  ?  Differences  of  wealth 
which  now  excite  envy  would,  of  course,  be  removed.  The  temp- 
tation to  covetousness  would  be  reduced,  since  there  would  not 
be  much  to  covet.  There  would  be  nothing  a  man  could  do  with 
plunder  —  unless  he  could  emigrate  with  it.     Would  "hatred 


458  JOHN   BATES   CLARK 

and  all  uncharitableness "  be  therefore  completely  absent,  oi 
would  they  be  present  in  a  form  that  would  still  make 
trouble  ? 

Even  though  there  would  be  no  dififerences  of  possessions 
between  man  and  man,  there  would  be  great  differences  in 
the  desirability  of  different  kinds  of  labor.  Some  work  is  safe 
and  some  is  dangerous.  Some  is  agreeable  and  some  is  dis- 
agreeable. The  artist,  the  author,  the  scientist,  the  explorer, 
and  the  inventor  take  pleasure  in  their  work ;  and  that  is  not 
often  to  be  said  of  the  stoker,  the  grinder  of  tools,  the  coal 
miner,  or  the  worker  in  factories  where  explosives  or  poisons  are 
made.  It  is  not  to  be  said  of  any  one  who  has  to  undergo  ex- 
hausting labor  for  long  hours.  In  industries  managed  by  the 
state  there  would  be  no  practicable  way  of  avoiding  the  necessity 
of  assigning  men  to  disagreeable,  arduous,  unhealthful,  or  dan- 
gerous employments.  Selections  of  men  for  such  fields  of  labor 
would  in  some  way  have  to  be  made,  and  those  selected  for  the 
undesirable  tasks  would  have  to  be  held  to  them  by  public 
authority.  Well  would  it  be  if  the  men  so  consigned,  looking 
upon  the  more  fortunate  workers,  were  not  good  material  for 
an  army  of  discontent.  Well  would  it  be  if  their  discontent  were 
not  turned  into  suspicion  of  their  rulers  and  charges  of  favorit- 
ism in  personal  treatment.  There  would  not  be,  as  now,  an 
abstraction  called  a  "system,"  on  which,  as  upon  the  camel's 
back,  it  would  be  possible  to  load  the  prevalent  evils.  Strong  in 
the  affections  of  the  people  must  be  the  personnel  of  a  government 
that  could  survive  the  discontent  which  necessary  inequalities  of 
treatment  would  excite.  Would  the  government  be  Hkely  to  be 
thus  strong  in  popular  affection  ?  We  may  judge  as  to  this  if  we 
look  at  one  further  peculiarity  of  it. 

The  pursuit  of  wealth  now  furnishes  the  outlet  for  the  over- 
mastering ambition  of  many  persons.  In  the  new  state,  the 
desire  to  rise  in  the  world  would  have  only  one  main  outlet, 
namely,  politics.  The  work  of  governing  the  country,  and  that 
of  managing  its  industries,  would  be  merged  in  one  great  official 
body.     The  contrast  between  rulers  and  ruled  would  be  enor- 


EDUCATION   AND   THE   SOCIALIST   MOVEMENT      459 

mously  heightened  by  this  concentration  of  power  in  the  hands  of 
the  rulers,  and  by  the  further  fact  that  the  ruled  would  never  be 
able,  by  means  of  wealth,  to  acquire  an  ofifset  for  the  advantages 
of  ofiiceholding.  The  desire  for  public  position  must  therefore 
be  intensified. 

There  would  be  some  prizes  to  be  gained,  in  a  worthy  way,  by 
other  kinds  of  service,  such  as  authorship,  invention,  and  discov- 
ery ;  but  the  prizes  which  would  appeal  to  most  men  would  be 
those  of  officialdom.  Is  it  in  reason  to  suppose  that  the  method 
of  securing  the  offices  would  then  be  better  than  it  is  at  present  ? 
Would  a  man,  under  the  new  regime,  work  quietly  at  his  task  in 
the  shoe  shop,  the  bakery,  or  the  mine,  waiting  for  the  office  to 
which  he  aspired  to  seek  him  out,  or  would  he  try  to  make  terms 
with  other  men  for  mutual  assistance  in  the  quest  of  office? 
Would  rings  be  less  general  than  they  are  now?  Could  there 
fail  to  be  bosses  and  political  machines  ?  Would  the  Tammanys 
of  the  new  order,  then,  be  an  improvement  on  the  Tammanys  of 
the  old  order  ?  To  the  sober  second  thought  which  mental  train- 
ing ought  to  favor,  it  appears  that  the  claim  of  the  socialistic 
state  to  a  peculiar  moral  excellence  brought  about  by  its  equality 
of  possessions  needs  a  very  thorough  sifting. 

Without  making  any  dogmatic  assertions,  we  may  say  that 
there  would  certainly  have  to  be  machines  of  some  sort  for  push- 
ing men  into  public  offices,  and  that  these  would  have  very  sinis- 
ter possibilities.  They  would  be  opposed  by  counter  machines, 
made  up  of  men  out  of  office  and  anxious  to  get  in.  "I  am  able 
to  see,"  said  Marshal  MacMahon,  when  nearing  the  end  of  his 
brief  presidency  of  the  French  Republic,  ''that  there  are  two 
classes  of  men  —  those  who  command  and  those  who  must  obey." 
If  the  demarcation  were  as  sharp  as  that  in  actual  society,  and  if 
the  great  prizes  in  life  were  political,  brief  indeed  might  be  the 
tenure  of  place  by  any  one  party,  and  revolutions  of  more  than 
South  American  frequency  might  be  the  normal  state  of  society. 
One  may  look  at  the  ideal  which  collectivism  ^  presents,  with  no 

^  The  economic  idea  underlying  socialism  :  ownership  by  the  community 
of  all  the  means  of  production.  — ■  Editors. 


460  JOHN  BATES   CLARK 

thought  of  such  dangers  ;  but  it  is  the  part  of  intelligence  at  least 
to  take  account  of  them. 

Besides  the  fact  that  some  would  be  in  office  and  others  out, 
and  that  some  would  be  in  easy  and  desirable  trades  and  others  in 
undesirable  ones,  there  would  be  the  further  fact  that  some  would 
live  in  the  city  and  some  in  the  country,  and  that  the  mere  local- 
izing of  occupations  would  afford  difficulty  for  the  ruling  class 
and  be  a  further  cause  of  possible  discontent.  But  a  much  more 
serious  test  of  the  capacity  of  the  government  would  have  to  be 
made  in  another  way.  Very  nice  adjustments  would  have  to  be 
made  between  agriculture  on  one  hand,  and  manufactures  and 
commerce  on  the  other;  and  further  adjustments  would  have 
to  be  made  between  the  different  branches  of  each  generic  divi- 
sion. All  this  would  be  done,  not  automatically  as  at  present, 
by  the  action  of  demand  and  supply  in  a  market,  but  by  the  vol- 
untary acts  of  officials.  Here  is  the  field  in  which  the  wisdom 
of  officials  would  be  overtaxed.  They  might  manage  the  mills 
of  the  steel  trust,  but  it  would  trouble  them  to  say  how  many 
men  should  be  employed  in  that  business  and  how  many  in 
every  other,  and  of  the  men  in  that  generic  branch,  how  many 
should  work  in  Pittsburgh  and  how  many  in  the  mines  of  Michigan 
and  Minnesota. 

A  fine  economic  classic  is  the  passage  in  which  Bishop  Whately 
describes  the  difficulty  of  provisioning  the  City  of  London  by  the 
action  of  an  official  commissariat,  and  contrasts  it  with  the  per- 
fection with  which  this  is  now  done  without  such  official  control. 
Individuals,  each  of  whom  seeks  only  to  promote  his  own  inter- 
est, work  in  harmony,  prevent  waste,  and  secure  the  city  against 
a  lack  of  any  needed  element.  Far  greater  would  be  the  con- 
trast between  satisfying  by  public  action  every  want  of  a  nation, 
and  doing  this  by  the  present  automatic  process ;  and  yet  crude 
thought  even  calls  competition  "chaotic,"  and  calls  on  the  state 
to  substitute  an  orderly  process.  Into  that  particular  error  dis- 
criminating thought  will  not  readily  fall. 

Difficulties  which  a  discerning  eye  perceives,  and  an  undiscern- 
ing  one  neglects,  thus  affect  the  conclusion  that  is  reached  as  to 


EDUCATION  AND   THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT      461 

whether  a  sociaHstic  plan  of  industry  could  or  could  not  be  made 
to  work.  Ignorance  does  not  so  much  as  encounter  the  real 
difficulties  in  the  case,  but  lightly  assumes  that  the  plan  would 
work,  and  is  eager  to  try  it.  I  am  not,  here  and  now,  claiming 
that  the  difficulties  cited  positively  prove  that  the  scheme  would 
not  work.  Granting  now,  for  the  sake  of  further  argument, 
that  it  could  be  made  to  work  —  that  on  the  political  side  it 
would  proceed  smoothly  and  peaceably,  and  that  on  the  economic 
side  it  would  run  on  no  fatal  rocks  —  would  it  give  a  material 
result  worth  having  ? 

Here  is  a  chance  for  a  wider  range  of  difference  between  the 
conclusions  of  different  minds.  There  are  three  specific  conse- 
quences of  the  socialistic  plan  of  industry,  each  of  which  is  at 
least  possible ;  and  a  prospect  that  all  of  them  would  occur  to- 
gether would  suffice  to  deter  practically  every  one  from  adhering 
to  this  plan.  Estimates  of  the  probability  of  these  evils  will 
vary,  but  that  each  one  of  the  three  is  possible,  is  not  to  be  de- 
nied. Of  these  results,  the  first  is,  on  the  whole,  the  gravest. 
It  is  the  check  that  socialism  might  impose  on  technical  prog- 
ress. At  present  we  see  a  bewildering  succession  of  inventions 
transforming  the  industries  of  the  world.  Machine  after  ma- 
chine appears  in  rapid  succession,  each  displacing  its  predecessor, 
working  for  a  time  and  giving  way  to  still  better  devices.  The 
power  of  man  over  nature  increases  with  amazing  rapidity. 
Even  in  the  relatively  simple  operations  of  agriculture,  the  reaper, 
the  thresher,  the  seeder,  and  the  gang  plow  enable  a  man  to- 
day to  do  as  much  work  as  could  a  score  of  men  in  the  colonial 
period  of  American  history.  In  manufacturing,  the  gain  is 
greater;  and  in  transportation,  it  is  indefinitely  greater.  The 
progress  goes  on  without  cessation,  since  the  thing  which  guaran- 
tees it  is  the  impulse  of  self-preservation.  An  employer  must 
improve  his  mechanism  if  his  rivals  do  so.  He  must  now  and 
then  get  ahead  of  his  rivals  if  he  is  to  make  any  profit.  Con- 
servatism which  adheres  to  the  old  is  self-destruction,  and  a 
certain  audacity  affords  the  nearest  approach  to  safety.  From 
this  it  comes  about,  first,  that  forward  movements  are  made 


462  JOHN   BATES   CLARK 

daily  and  hourly  in  some  part  of  the  field ;  and,  secondly,  that 
with  every  forward  movement  the  whole  procession  must  move 
on  to  catch  up  with  its  new  leader. 

Now,  it  is  possible  to  suppose  that  under  socialism  an  altru- 
istic motive  may  lead  men  to  make  inventions  and  discoveries. 
They  may  work  for  the  good  of  humanity.  The  desire  for  dis- 
tinction may  also  impel  them  to  such  labors,  and  non-pecuniary 
rewards  offered  by  the  state  may  second  this  desire.  The  in- 
ventive impulse  may  act  even  where  no  reward  is  in  view.  Men 
will  differ  greatly  in  their  estimates  of  the  amount  of  progress 
that  can  be  gained  in  this  way ;  but  the  thing  that  may  be 
affirmed  without  danger  of  denial  is,  that  the  competitive  race 
absolutely  compels  progress  at  a  rate  that  is  inspiringly  rapid, 
and  that  there  is  much  uncertainty  as  to  the  amount  of  progress 
that  would  be  secured  where  other  motives  are  relied  on.  Offi- 
cialdom is  generally  unfavorable  to  the  adoption  of  improved 
devices,  even  when  they  are  presented;  its  boards  have  fre- 
quently been  the  graveyards  of  inventions,  and  there  is  no  blink- 
ing the  uncertainty  as  to  whether  a  satisfactory  rate  of  improve- 
ment could  be  obtained  where  the  methods  of  production  should 
be  at  the  mercy  of  such  boards.  The  keener  the  intelligence,  the 
more  clearly  it  will  perceive  the  importance  of  progress,  and  the 
immeasurable  evil  that  would  follow  any  check  upon  it ;  the 
more  also  it  will  dread  every  cause  of  uncertainty  as  to  the  main- 
tenance of  the  present  rate  of  improvement. 

An  important  fact  concerning  competitive  industry  is  the  ease 
with  which  new  technical  methods  translate  themselves,  first 
into  temporary  profits  for  employers,  and  then  into  abiding 
returns  for  other  classes.  The  man  who  introduces  an  efficient 
machine  makes  money  by  the  means  until  his  competitors  get  a 
similar  appliance,  after  which  the  profit  vanishes.  The  product 
of  the  machine  still  enriches  society,  by  diffusing  itself  among  the 
people  in  the  shape  of  lower  prices  of  goods.  The  profit  from 
any  one  such  device  is  bound  to  be  temporary,  while  the  gain 
that  comes  from  cheap  goods  is  permanent.  If  we  watch  some 
one  industry,  like  shoemaking  or  cotton  spinning,  we  find  profits 


EDUCATION  AND   THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT      463 

appearing  and  vanishing,  and  appearing  again  and  vanishing 
again.  If  we  include  in  our  vision  the  system  as  a  whole,  we 
find  them  appearing  now  in  one  branch  of  industry,  now  in 
another,  and  now  in  still  another,  shifting  forever  their  places 
in  the  system,  but  always  present  somewhere.  Steel,  cotton, 
wool,  machinery,  or  flour,  takes  its  turn  in  affording  gains  to  its 
producer,  and  these  gains  constitute  the  largest  source  of  addi- 
tions to  capital.  These  natural  profits  in  themselves  burden 
nobody.  Not  only  is  there  in  them  no  trace  of  exploitation  of 
labor,  but  from  the  very  start  the  influence  that  yields  the  profit 
improves  the  condition  of  labor,  and  in  the  end  labor,  as  the  great- 
est of  all  consumers,  gets  the  major  benefit.^ 

Now,  an  important  fact  is  that  such  profits  based  on  improved 
technical  processes  naturally,  and  almost  necessarily,  add  them- 
selves to  capital.  The  employer  wishes  to  enlarge  his  business 
while  the  profits  last  —  "to  make  hay  while  the  sun  shines."  He 
has  no  disposition  to  spend  the  income  which  he  knows  will  be 
transient,  but  has  every  disposition  to  enlarge  the  scale  of  his 
operations  and  provide  a  permanent  income  for  the  future. 
Easily,  naturally,  painlessly,  the  great  accretions  of  capital 
come ;  mainly  by  advances  in  technical  operations  of  production. 

In  the  socialistic  state  all  the  incomes  of  the  year  would  be 
pooled.  They  would  make  a  composite  sum  out  of  which  every 
one's  stipend  would  have  to  be  taken.  There  would  be  no  spe- 
cial and  personal  profit  for  any  one.  The  gains  that  come  from 
improved  technique  would  not  be  distinguishable  from  those  that 
come  from  other  sources.  Every  one  would  be  a  laborer,  and 
every  one  would  get  his  daily  or  weekly  stipend ;  and  if  capital 
had  to  be  increased,  —  if  the  needs  of  an  enlarging  business  had 
to  be  provided  for  at  all,  —  it  could  only  be  done  by  withholding 
some  part  of  that  stipend.  It  would  be  an  unwelcome  way  of 
making  accumulations.     It  would  mean  the  conscious  acceptance 

1  A  fuller  treatment  of  this  subject  would  take  account  of  the  incidental 
evils  which  inventions  often  cause,  by  forcing  some  persons  to  change  their 
employments,  and  would  show  that  these  evils  were  once  great  but  are  now 
smaller  and  destined  to  diminish. 


464  JOHN  BATES   CLARK 

by  the  entire  working  class  of  a  smaller  income  than  might 
otherwise  be  had.  If  one  has  heroic  confidence  in  the  far-seeing 
quality  and  in  the  generous  purpose  of  the  working  class,  he  may 
perhaps  think  that  it  will  reconcile  itself  to  this  painful  self- 
denial  for  the  benefit  of  the  future ;  but  it  is  clear  that  there  are 
large  probabilities  in  the  other  direction.  There  is  danger  that 
capital  would  not  be  thus  saved  in  sufficient  quantity,  and  that, 
if  it  were  not  so,  no  power  on  earth  could  prevent  the  earning 
capacity  of  labor  from  suffering  in  consequence.  From  mere 
dearth  of  capital  the  socialistic  state,  though  it  were  more  pro- 
gressive than  we  think,  would  be  in  danger  of  becoming  poorer 
and  poorer. 

There  is  another  fact  concerning  the  present  system  which  a 
brief  study  of  economics  brings  to  every  one's  attention,  and 
which  has  a  very  close  connection  with  the  outlook  for  the  future 
of  laborers.  It  is  the  growth  of  population.  The  Malthusian 
doctrine  of  population  maintains  that  increased  wages  are  fol- 
lowed by  a  quick  increase  in  the  number  of  the  working  people, 
and  that  this  brings  the  wages  down  to  their  former  level. ^  On  its 
face  it  appears  to  say  that  there  is  not  much  hope  of  permanent 
gains  for  labor,  and  it  was  this  teaching  which  was  chiefly  respon- 
sible for  giving  to  political  economy  the  nickname  of  the  "dismal 
science."  It  is  true  that  the  teachings  of  Malthus  contain  a  pro- 
viso whereby  it  is  not  impossible  under  a  certain  condition  that 
the  wages  of  labor  may  permanently  increase.  Something  may 
raise  the  standard  of  living  more  or  less  permanently,  and  this 
fact  may  nullify  the  tendency  of  population  to  increase  unduly. 
Modern  teachings  make  the  utmost  of  this  saving  proviso,  and 
show  that  standards  have  in  fact  risen,  that  families  of  the  well- 
to-do  are  smaller  than  those  of  empty-handed  laborers,  and  that, 
with  advancing  wages  based  on  enlarged  producing  power,  the 
workers  may  not  see  their  gains  slipping  from  their  hands  in  the 
old  Malthusian  fashion,  but  may  hold  them  more  and  more 
firmly.     Progress  may  cause  further  progress. 

Now,  socialism  proposes  to  place  families  in  a  condition  resem- 
1 T.  R.  Malthus,  Essay  on  Population,  1 798.  — •  Editors. 


EDUCATION  AND   THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT     465 

bling  that  in  which,  in  American  history,  the  natural  growth  has 
been  most  rapid,  the  condition,  namely,  in  which  children  are 
maintained  without  cost  to  parents,  as  they  were  when  they  lived 
on  farms  and  were  set  working  at  an  early  age.  If  this  should 
mean  that  the  old  Malthusian  law  would  operate  in  the  socialistic 
state,  the  experiment  would  be  hopelessly  wrecked.  If  the  state 
provides  for  children  from  their  birth  to  the  end  of  their  lives,  the 
particular  influence  that  puts  a  check  on  the  size  of  families  will 
be  absent.  One  may  not  affirm  with  positiveness  that  the  worst 
form  of  Malthusianism  would  actually  operate  under  socialism ; 
nothing  but  experiment  will  give  certain  knowledge  in  this  par- 
ticular; but  what  a  little  discernment  makes  perfectly  certain 
is,  that  there  would  be  danger  of  this. 

Quite  apart,  then,  from  political  uncertainties,  three  coordinate 
influences  on  the  purely  economic  side  must  be  taken  full  account 
of  by  anybody  who  would  intelligently  advocate  the  nationaliz- 
ing of  production.  There  are :  first,  the  probable  check  on  tech- 
nical progress ;  secondly,  the  difficulty  encountered  in  enlarging 
capital ;  and  thirdly,  the  possible  impetus  to  the  growth  of  pop- 
ulation. If  the  first  two  influences  were  to  work  without  the 
other,  sociahsm  would  mean  that  we  should  all  slowly  grow  poor 
together;  and  if  the  third  influence  were  also  to  operate,  we 
should  grow  poor  very  rapidly. 

We  have  not  proved,  as  if  by  incontestable  mathematics,  that 
sociahsm  is  not  practicable  and  not  desirable.  We  have  cited 
facts  which  lead  a  majority  of  persons  to  believe  this.  The 
unfavorable  possibilities  of  socialism  bulk  large  in  an  intelligent 
view,  but  positive  proof  as  to  what  would  happen  in  such  a  state 
can  come  only  through  actual  experience.  Some  country  must 
turn  itself  into  an  experimental  laboratory  for  testing  the  collec- 
tive mode  of  production  and  distribution,  before  the  world  can 
definitely  know  what  that  process  would  involve.  In  advance 
of  this  test,  there  is  a  line  of  inquiry  which  yields  a  more  assured 
conclusion  than  can  any  estimate  of  a  state  which,  as  yet,  is 
imaginary.  It  is  the  study  of  the  present  industrial  system  and 
its  tendencies.     When  we  guess  that  the  collective  management 


466  JOHN   BATES   CLARK 

of  all  production  by  the  state  would  fail  to  work,  and  would  lead 
to  poverty  even  if  it  succeeded  in  working,  we  are  met  by  those 
who  guess  it  would  succeed  and  lead  to  general  abundance ;  and 
they  will  certainly  claim  that  their  guesses  are  worth  as  much  as 
ours.  As  to  the  tendencies  of  the  present  state,  and  the  outlook 
they  afford,  it  is  possible  to  know  much  more.  The  testimony 
of  facts  is  positive  as  to  some  things,  and  very  convincing  as  to 
others. 

No  one  is  disposed  to  deny  the  dazzling  series  of  technical 
improvements  which  the  rivalries  of  the  present  day  insure. 
There  is  not  only  progress,  but  a  law  of  progress ;  not  only  the 
productive  power  that  we  are  gaining,  but  the  force  that,  if 
allowed  to  work,  will  forever  compel  us  to  gain  it.  There  is  no 
assignable  limit  to  the  power  that  man  will  hereafter  acquire 
over  nature.  Again  and  again,  in  the  coming  years  and  cen- 
turies, will  the  wand  of  inventive  genius  smite  the  rock  and  cause 
new  streams  of  wealth  to  gush  forth ;  and,  as  already  said,  much 
of  this  new  wealth  will  take  naturally  and  easily  the  form  of 
capital.  It  will  multiply  and  improve  the  tools  that  labor  works 
with ;  and  a  fact  which  science  proves  is  that  the  laborer,  quite 
apart  from  the  capitalist,  thrives  by  the  operation.  He  gets 
higher  and  higher  pay  as  his  method  of  laboring  becomes  more 
fruitful.  It  is  as  though  he  were  personally  bringing  for  his  own 
use  new  streams  from  the  rock ;  and  even  though  this  worker 
were  striking  a  landlord's  rock  with  a  capitalist's  hammer,  the 
new  stream  could  not  fail  to  come  largely  to  himself. 

Mere  labor  will  have  increasing  power  to  create  wealth,  and  to 
get  wealth,  as  its  methods  improve  and  its  tools  more  and  more 
abound.  This  will  not  transform  the  workingman's  whole  life  in 
a  day  —  it  will  not  instantly  place  him  where  the  rubbing  of  a 
lamp  wall  make  genii  his  servants,  but  it  will  give  him  to-morrow 
more  than  he  gets  to-day,  and  the  day  after  to-morrow  still  more. 
It  will  enable  his  own  efforts  to  raise  him  surely,  steadily,  in- 
spiringly,  toward  the  condition  of  which  he  dreams.  It  will 
■  throw  sunshine  on  the  future  hills  —  substantial  and  reachable 
hills,  though  less  brilliant  than  pictured  mountain;;  of  cloudland. 


EDUCATION  AND   THE   SOCIALIST  MOVEMENT      467 

Well  within  the  possibilities  of  a  generation  or  two  is  the  gain 
that  will  make  the  worker  comfortable  and  care  free.  Like  the 
village  blacksmith,  he  may  "look  the  whole  world  in  the  face" 
with  independence,  but  with  no  latent  enmity.  Manly  self- 
assertion  there  may  be,  with  no  sense  of  injury.  The  well-paid 
laborer  may  stand  before  the  rich  without  envy,  as  the  rich  will 
stand  before  him  without  pity  or  condescension.  It  may  be  that 
the  condition  described  by  Edward  Atkinson,  in  which  it  "will 
not  pay  to  be  rich"  because  of  the  cares  which  wealth  must 
bring,  may  never  arrive.  It  will  always  be  better  to  have  some- 
thing than  to  have  nothing ;  but  it  may,  at  some  time,  be  better 
to  have  relatively  little  than  to  have  inordinately  much ;  and 
the  worker  may  be  able  to  come  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  state 
in  which,  for  him,  comforts  are  plentiful  and  anxieties  are  scarce. 
Amid  a  vast  inequality  of  mere  possessions,  there  may  be  less  and 
less  of  inequality  of  genuine  welfare.  Many  a  man  with  a  modest 
store  may  have  no  wish  to  change  lots  with  the  multimillionaire. 
For  comfortable  living,  for  high  thinking,  and  for  the  finer  traits 
of  humanity,  the  odds  may  be  in  his  favor. 

In  such  a  state  there  might  easily  be  realized  a  stronger  democ- 
racy than  any  which  a  leveHng  of  fortunes  would  bring.  Pulling 
others  down  that  we  may  pull  ourselves  up  is  not  a  good  initial 
step  in  a  regime  of  brotherhood ;  but  raising  ourselves  and  others 
together  is  the  very  best  step  from  the  first  and  throughout.  And 
the  fraternity  which  comes  in  this  way  is  by  far  the  finer,  because 
of  inequality  of  possessions.  If  we  can  love  no  man  truly  unless 
we  have  as  much  money  as  he  has,  our  brotherly  spirit  is  of  a 
very  peculiar  kind,  and  the  fraternity  that  would  depend  on  such 
a  leveling  would  have  no  virility.  It  would  have  the  pulpy  fiber 
of  a  rank  weed,  while  the  manlier  brotherhood  that  grows  in  the 
midst  of  inequality  has  the  oaken  fiber  that  endures.  The  rela- 
tively poor  we  shall  have  with  us,  and  the  inordinately  rich  as  well; 
but  it  is  in  the  power  of  humanity  to  project  its  fraternal  bonds 
across  the  chasms  which  such  conditions  create.  Though  there  be 
thrones  and  principalities  in  our  earthly  paradise,  they  will  not  mar 
its  perfection,  but  will  develop  the  finer  traits  of  its  inhabitants. 


468  JOHN  BATES   CLARK 

This  state  is  the  better  because  it  is  not  cheaply  attained. 
There  are  difficulties  to  be  surmounted,  which  we  have  barely 
time  to  mention  and  no  time  to  discuss.  One  of  the  greatest  of 
these  is  the  vanishing  of  much  competition.  The  eager  rivalry 
in  perfecting  methods  and  multiplying  products,  which  is  at  the 
basis  of  our  confidence  in  the  future,  seems  to  have  here  and  there 
given  place  to  monopoly,  which  always  means  apathy  and  stagna- 
tion. We  have  before  us  a  struggle  —  a  successful  one,  if  we 
rise  to  the  occasion  —  to  keep  alive  the  essential  force  of  compe- 
tition ;  and  this  fact  reveals  the  very  practical  relation  which 
intelligence  sustains  to  the  different  proposals  for  social  improve- 
ment. It  must  put  us  in  the  way  of  keeping  effective  the  main- 
spring of  progress  —  of  surmounting  those  evils  which  mar  the 
present  prospect.  Trained  intelligence  here  has  its  task  marked 
out  for  it :  it  must  show  that  monopoly  can  be  effectively  attacked, 
and  must  point  out  the  way  to  do  it  —  a  far  different  way  from 
any  yet  adopted.  Our  people  have  the  fortunes  of  themselves, 
their  children,  and  their  children's  children,  in  their  own  hands. 
Surely,  and  even  somewhat  rapidly,  may  the  gains  we  have  out- 
lined be  made  to  come  by  united  effort  guided  by  intelligent 
thought. 

It  requires  discernment  to  estimate  progress  itself  at  its  true 
value.  John  Stuart  Mill  made  the  remark  that  no  system  could 
be  worse  than  the  present  one,  if  that  system  did  not  admit  of 
improvement.  This  remark  could  be  made  of  any  system.  How- 
ever fair  a  social  state  might  at  the  outset  appear,  it  would  be 
essentially  bad  if  it  could  never  change  for  the  better.  The  so- 
ciety in  which  efficient  methods  supplant  inefficient  ones,  and  in 
which  able  directors  come  naturally  into  control  of  production, 
insures  a  perpetual  survival  of  excellence,  and  however  low  might 
be  the  state  from  which  such  a  course  of  progress  took  its  start, 
the  society  would  ultimately  excel  any  stationary  one  that  could 
be  imagined.  A  Purgatory  actuated  by  the  principle  which  guar- 
antees improvement  will  surpass,  in  the  end,  a  Paradise  which  has 
not  this  dynamic  quality.  For  a  limited  class  in  our  own  land  — 
chiefly  in  the  slums  of  cities  —  life  has  too  much  of  the  purga- 


EDUCATION  AND    THE   SOCIALIST   MOVEMENT      469 

torial  quality ;  for  the  great  body  of  its  inhabitants  the  condition 
it  affords,  though  by  no  means  a  paradise,  is  one  that  would  have 
seemed  so  to  many  a  civilization  of  the  past  and  to  many  a  foreign 
society  of  to-day.  On  its  future  course  it  is  starting  from  a  high 
level,  and  is  moved  by  a  powerful  force  toward  an  ideal  which 
will  some  day  be  a  reality,  and  which  is  therefore  inspiring  to 
look  upon,  even  in  the  distance. 

Like  Webster,  we  may  hail  the  advancing  generations  and  bid 
them  welcome  to  a  land  that  is  fairer  than  our  own,  and  promises 
to  grow  fairer  and  fairer  forever.  That  this  prospect  be  not  im- 
periled —  that  the  forces  that  make  it  a  reality  be  enabled  to  do 
their  work  —  is  what  the  men  of  the  future  ask  ot  the  intelligence 
of  to-day. 


XVII 

THE   SUBJECTION    OF   WOMEN 

John  Stuart  Mill 

[John  Stuart  Mill's  essay,  The  Subjection  of  Women  (1867),  his  last  pub- 
lished work,  is  one  of  the  pioneer  documents  in  a  cause  that  ha^  received 
constantly  increasing  attention.  Throughout  his  life  Mill  had  favored  the 
emancipation  of  women ;  but  the  influence  most  directly  responsible  for  the 
volume  that  embodies  his  opinions  on  the  subject  was  his  wife,  to  whom  he 
also  assigns  a  great  share  of  the  credit  for  the  work  On  Liberty.  She  her- 
self had  written  an  essay  on  the  Enfranchisement  of  Women  which,  with  her_ 
discussions  with  her  husband,  laid  the  foundation  for  his  book. 

The  first  chapter  of  this  work  has  been  selected  to  present  the  basic  argu- 
ments of  the  modern  suffrage  movement,  as  the  book  can  still  claim  to  be  a 
classic  of  its  kind,  despite  the  fact  that  it  is  out  of  date  and  that  many  of  the 
unfair  discriminations  of  that  day  no  longer  exist.  The  distinctive  feature  of 
Mill's  argument  on  the  emancipation  question  consists  in  his  assertion  that 
the  difference  of  sex  is  accidental,  hke  the  difference  of  color,  and  that  there 
are  no  grounds  for  forming  any  conclusions  about  the  limitations  of  woman, 
as  we  really  know  absolutely  nothing  about  the  possibilities  of  her  nature. 
Needless  to  say.  Mill's  views,  in  an  age  still  innocent  of  militant  propaganda, 
brought  down  upon  him  a  storm  of  criticism,  even  from  the  liberals.  A  brief 
for  the  conservatives  on  this  still  very  live  question  is  given  by  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  in  the  next  essay.] 

The  object  of  this  essay  is  to  explain,  as  clearly  as  I  am  able, 
the  grounds  of  an  opinion  which  I  have  held  from  the  very  earliest 
period  when  I  had  formed  any  opinions  at  all  on  social  or  politi- 
cal matters,  and  which,  instead  of  being  weakened  or  modified, 
has  been  constantly  growing  stronger  by  the  progress  of  reflec- 
tion and  the  experience  of  hf e :  That  theprinciple  which  regulates  ; 
the  existing  social  relations  between  the  two  sexes  —  the  legal  y  \ 
subordination  of  one  sex  to  the  other  —  is  wrong  in  itself,  and 
now  one  of  the  chief  hindrances  to  human  improvement;  and 

470 


THE  SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  471 

that  it  ought  to  be  replaced  by  a  principle  of  perfect  equality/^ 
admitting  no  power  or  privilege  on  the  one  side,  nor  disability 
on  the  other. 

The  very  words  necessary  to  express  the  task  I  have  under- 
taken, show  how  arduous  it  is.  But  it  would  be  a  mistake  to 
suppose  that  the  difficulty  of  the  case  must  lie  in  the  insufficiency 
or  obscurity  of  the  grounds  of  reason  on  which  my  conviction 
rests.  The  difficulty  is  that  which  exists  in  all  cases  in  which 
there  is  a  mass  of  feeling  to  be  contended  against.  So  long  as  an 
opinion  is  strongly  rooted  in  the  feelings,  it  gains  rather  than  loses^ 
in  stability  by  having  a  preponderating  weight  of  argument 
against  it.  For  if  it  were  accepted  as  a  result  of  argument,  the 
refutation  of  the  argument  might  shake  the  solidity  of  the  con- 
viction ;  but  when  it  rests  solely  on  feehng,  the  worse  it  fares  in 
argumentative  contest,  the  more  persuaded  its  adherents  are 
that  their  feeling  must  have  some  deeper  ground,  which  the  argu- 
ments do  not  reach ;  and  while  the  feeling  remains,  it  is  always 
throwing  up  fresh  intrenchments  of  argument  to  repair  any 
breach  made  in  the  old.  And  there  are  so  many  causes  tending 
to  make  the  feelings  connected  with  this  subject  the  most  in- 
tense and  most  deeply  rooted  of  all  those  which  gather  round  and 
protect  old  institutions  and  customs,  that  we  need  not  wonder 
to  find  them  as  yet  less  undermined  and  loosened  than  any  of  the 
rest  by  the  progress  of  the  great  modern  spiritual  and  social  tran- 
sition; nor  suppose  that  the  barbarisms  to  which  men  cling 
longest  must  be  less  barbarisms  than  those  which  they  earlier 
shake  off. 

In  every  respect  the  burden  is  hard  on  those  who  attack  an 
almost  universal  opinion.  They  must  be  very  fortunate,  as  well 
as  unusually  capable,  if  they  obtain  a  hearing  at  all.  They  have 
more  difficulty  in  obtaining  a  trial  than  any  other  htigants  have 
in  getting  a  verdict.  If  they  do  extort  a  hearing,  they  are  sub- 
jected to  a  set  of  logical  requirements  totally  different  from 
those  exacted  from  other  people.  In  all  other  cases,  the  bur- 
den of  proof  is  supposed  to  lie  with  the  affirmative.  If  a 
person  is  charged  with  a  murder,  it  rests  with  those  who  accuse 


472  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

him  to  give  proof  of  his  guilt,  not  with  himself  to  prove  his  inno- 
cence. If  there  is  a  difference  of  opinion  about  the  reality  of  any 
alleged  historical  event,  in  which  the  feehngs  of  men  in  general 
are  not  much  interested,  as  the  siege  of  Troy  for  example,  those 
who  maintain  that  the  event  took  place  are  expected  to  produce 
their  proofs,  before  those  who  take  the  other  side  can  be  required 
to  say  anything ;  and  at  no  time  are  these  required  to  do  more 
than  show  that  the  evidence  produced  by  the  others  is  of  no 
value.  Again,  in  practical  matters,  the  burden  of  proof  is  sup- 
posed to  be  with  those  who  are  against  liberty ;  who  contend  for 
any  restriction  or  prohibition ;  either  any  limitation  of  the  gen- 
eral freedom  of  human  action,  or  any  disqualification  or  disparity 
of  privilege  affecting  one  person  or  kind  of  persons,  as  compared 
with  others.  The  a  priori  presumption  is  in  favor  of  freedom  and 
impartiality.  It  is  held  that  there  should  be  no  restraint  not 
required  by  the  general  good,  and  that  the  law  should  be  no  re- 
specter of  persons,  but  should  treat  all  ahke,  save  where  dissimi- 
larity of  treatment  is  required  by  positive  reasons,  either  of 
justice  or  of  policy.  But  of  none  of  these  rules  of  evidence  will 
the  benefit  be  allowed  to  those  who  maintain  the  opinion  I  pro- 
fess. It  is  useless  for  me  to  say  that  those  who  maintain  the  ^ 
doctrine  that  men  have  a  right  to  command  and  women  are  under  1 
an  obligation  to  obey,  or  that  men  are  fit  for  government  and  | 
women  unfit,  are  on  the  affirmative  side  of  the  question,  and  that  J 
they  are  bound  to  show  positive  evidence  for  the  assertions,  or 
submit  to  their  rejection.  It  is  equally  unavailing  for  me  to  say 
that  those  who  deny  to  women  any  freedom  or  privilege  rightly 
allowed  to  men,  having  the  double  presumption  against  them 
that  they  are  opposing  freedom  and  recommending  partiality, 
must  be  held  to  the  strictest  proof  of  their  case,  and  unless  their 
success  be  such  as  to  exclude  all  doubt,  the  judgment  ought  to 
go  against  them.  These  would  be  thought  good  pleas  in  any 
common  case ;  but  they  will  not  be  thought  so  in  this  instance. 
Before  I  could  hope  to  make  any  impression,  I  should  be  expected 
not  only  to  answer  all  that  has  ever  been  said  by  those  who  take 
the  other  side  of  the  question,  but  to  imagine  all  that  could  be 


'v^. 


THE   SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  473 

said  by  them  —  to  find  them  in  reasons,  as  well  as  answer  all 
I  find :  and  besides  refuting  all  arguments  for  the  affirmative,  I 
shall  be  called  upon  for  invincible  positive  arguments  to  prove 
a  negative.  And  even  if  I  could  do  all  this,  and  leave  the  opposite 
party  with  a  host  of  unanswered  arguments  against  them,  and 
not  a  single  unrefuted  one  on  their  side,  I  should  be  thought  to 
have  done  little ;  for  a  cause  supported  on  the  one  hand  by  uni- 
versal usage,  and  on  the  other  by  so  great  a  preponderance  of 
popular  sentiment,  is  supposed  to  have  a  presumption  in  its 
favor  superior  to  any  conviction  which  an  appeal  to  reason  has 
power  to  produce  in  any  intellects  but  those  of  a  high  class. 

I  do  not  mention  these  difficulties  to  complain  of  them :  first,  be- 
cause it  would  be  useless ;  they  are  inseparable  from  having  to 
contend  through  people's  understandings  against  the  hostility  of 
their  feelings  and  practical  tendencies :  and  truly  the  under- 
standings of  the  majority  of  mankind  would  need  to  be  much  bet- 
ter cultivated  than  has  ever  yet  been  the  case,  before  they  could^ 
be  asked  to  place  such  reliance  in  their  own  power  of  estimating 
arguments  as  to  give  up  practical  principles  in  which  they  have 
been  born  and  bred  and  which  are  the  basis  of  much  of  the  exist- 
ing order  of  the  world,  at  the  first  argumentative  attack  which 
they  are  not  capable  of  logically  resisting.  I  do  not  therefore 
quarrel  with  them  for  having  too  little  faith  in  argument,  but  for 
having  too  much  faith  in  custom  and  the  general  feeling.  It 
is  one  of  the  characteristic  prejudices  of  the  reaction  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  against  the  eighteenth,  to  accord  to  the  unrea- 
soning elements  in  human  nature  the  infallibility  which  the_ 
eighteenth  century  is  supposed  to  have  ascribed  to  the  reasoning 
elements.  For  the  apotheosis  of  Reason  we  have  substituted  that 
of  Instinct;  and  we  call  everything  instinct  which  we  find  in 
ourselves  and  for  which  we  cannot  trace  any  rational  foundation. 
This  idolatry,  infinitely  more  degrading  than  the  other,  and  the 
most  pernicious  of  the  false  worships  of  the  present  day,  of  all  of 
which  it  is  now  the  main  support,  will  probably  hold  its  ground 
until  it  gives  way  before  a  sound  psychology,  laying  bare  the  real 
root  of  much  that  is  bowed  down  to  as  the  intention  of  nature 


474  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

and  the  ordinance  of  God.  As  regards  the  present  question,  1 
am  willing  to  accept  the  unfavorable  conditions  which  the  preju- 
dice assigns  to  me.  I  consent  that  established  custom,  and  the 
general  feeling,  should  be  deemed  conclusive  against  me,  unless 
that  custom  and  feeling  from  age  to  age  can  be  shown  to  have 
owed  their  existence  to  other  causes  than  their  soundness,  and 
to  have  derived  their  power  from  the  worse  rather  than  the  better 
parts  of  human  nature.  I  am  wilHng  that  judgment  should 
go  against  me,  unless  I  can  show  that  my  judge  has  been  tam- 
pered with.  The  concession  is  not  so  great  as  it  might  appear ; 
for  to  prove  this  is  by  far  the  easiest  portion  of  my  task. 

The  generality  of  a  practice  is  in  some  cases  a  strong  presump- 
tion that  it  is,  or  at  all  events  once  was,  conducive  to  laudable 
ends.  This  is  the  case,  when  the  practice  was  first  adopted,  or 
afterwards  kept  up,  as  a  means  to  such  ends,  and  was  grounded 
on  experience  of  the  mode  in  which  they  could  be  most  effectually 
attained.  If  the  authority  of  men  over  women,  when  first  estab- 
lished, had  been  the  result  of  conscientious  comparison  between 
different  modes  of  constituting  the  government  of  society;  if, 
after  trying  various  other  modes  of  social  organization  —  the 
government  of  women  over  men,  equality  between  the  two,  and 
such  mixed  and  divided  modes  of  government  as  might  be  in- 
vented —  it  had  been  decided,  on  the  testimony  of  experience, 
that  the  mode  in  which  women  are  wholly  under  the  rule  of  men, 
having  no  share  at  all  in  public  concerns,  and  each  in  private 
being  under  the  legal  obligation  of  obedience  to  the  man  with 
whom  she  has  associated  her  destiny,  was  the  arrangement  most 
conducive  to  the  happiness  and  well-being  of  both;  its  general 
adoption  might  then  be  fairly  thought  to  be  some  evidence  that, 
at  the  time  when  it  was  adopted,  it  was  the  best :  though  even 
then  the  considerations  which  recommended  it  may,  like  so 
many  other  primeval  social  facts  of  the  greatest  importance,  have 
subsequently,  in  the  course  of  ages,  ceased  to  exist.  But  the 
state  of  the  case  is  in  every  respect  the  reverse  of  this.  In  the 
I  first  place,  the  opinion  in  favor  of  the  present  system,  which  en- 
tirely subordinates  the  weaker  sex  to  the  stronger,  rests  upon 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN  475 

theory  only ;  for  there  never  has  been  trial  made  of  any  other : 
solthat  experience,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  vulgarly  opposed  to 
theory,  cannot  be  pretended  to  have  pronounced  any  verdict. 
And  in  the  second  place,  the  adoption  of  this  system  of  inequality 
never  was  the  result  of  deliberation,  or  forethought,  or  any  social 
ideas,  or  any  notion  whatever  of  what  conduced  to  the  benefit  of 
humanity  or  the  good  order  of  society.  It  arose  simply  from  the 
fact  that  from  the  very  earhest  twiUght  of  human  society,  every 
woman  (owing  to  the  value  attached  to  her  by  men,  combined 
with  her  inferiority  in  muscular  strength)  was  found  in  a  state 
of  bondage  to  some  man.  Laws  and  systems  of  polity  always 
begin  by  recognizing  the  relations  they  find  already  existing  be- 
tween individuals.  They  convert  what  was  a  mere  physical  fact 
into  a  legal  right,  give  it  the  sanction  of  society,  and  principally 
aim  at  the  substitution  of  public  and  organized  means  of  assert- 
ing and  protecting  these  rights,  instead  of  the  irregular  and  law- 
less conflict  of  physical  strength.  Those  who  had  already  been 
compelled  to  obedience  became  in  this  manner  legally  bound  to 
it.  Slavery,  from  being  a  mere  affair  of  force  between  the  master 
and  the  slave,  became  regularized  and  a  matter  of  compact 
among  the  masters,  who,  binding  themselves  to  one  another  for 
common  protection,  guaranteed  by  their  collective  strength  the 
private  possessions  of  each,  including  his  slaves.  In  early  times 
the  grea:t  majority  of  the  male^sex  were  slaves,  as  well  as  the 
whole  of  the  female.  And  many  ages  elapsed,  some  of  them  ages 
^of  high  cultivation,  before  any  thinker  was  bold  enough  to  ques- 
tion the  rightfulness,  and  the  absolute  social  necessity,  either 
of  the  one  slavery  or  of  the  other.  By  degrees  such  thinkers  did 
arise :  and  (the  general  progress  of  society  assisting)  the  slavery 
of  the  male  sex  has,  in  all  the  countries  of  Christian  Europe  at 
least  (though,  in  one  of  them,  only  vithin  the  last  few  years  0 
been  at  length  abolished,  and  that  of  the  female  sex  has  been 
gradually  changed  into  a  milder  form  of  dependence.  But  this 
dependence,  as  it  exists  at  present,  is  not  an  original  institution, 
taking  a  fresh  start  from  considerations  of  justice  and  social  ex- 
'  Serfdom  was  not  abolished  in  Russia  until  1861.  —  Editors. 


476  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

pediency  —  it  is  the  primitive  state  of  slavery  lasting  on,  through 
successive  mitigations  and  modifications  occasioned  by  the  same 
causes  which  have  softened  the  general  manners,  and  brought  all 
human  relations  more  under  the  control  of  justice  and  the  influ- 
ence of  humanity.  It  has  not  lost  the  taint  of  its  brutal  origin. 
No  presumption  in  its  favor,  therefore,  can  be  drawn  from  the 
fact  of  its  existence.  The  only  such  presumption  which  it  could 
be  supposed  to  have,  must  be  grounded  on  its  having  lasted  till 
now,  when  so  many  other  things  which  came  down  from  the  same 
odious  source  have  been  done  away  with.  And  this,  indeed,  is 
what  makes  it  strange  to  ordinary  ears,  to  hear  it  asserted  that 
the  inequality  of  rights  between  men  and  women  has  no  other 
source  than  the  law  of  the  strongest. 

That  this  statement  should  have  the  effect  of  a  paradox  is  in 
some  respects  creditable  to  the  progress  of  civilization,  and  the 
improvement  of  the  moral  sentiments  of  mankind.  We  now, 
live  —  that  is  to  say,  one  or  two  of  the  most  advanced  nations  of  1 
the  world  now  live  —  in  a  state  in  which  the  law  of  the  strongest ) 
seems  to  be  entirely  abandoned  as  the  regulating  principle  of  the 
world's  affairs :  nobody  professes  it,  and,  as  regards  most  of  the 
relations  between  human  beings,  nobody  is  permitted  to  practice 
it.  When  any  one  succeeds  in  doing  so,  it  is  under  cover  of  some 
pretext  which  gives  him  the  semblance  of  having  some  general 
social  interest  on  his  side.  This  being  the  ostensible  state  of 
things,  people  flatter  themselves  that  the  rule  of  mere  force  is 
ended ;  that  the  law  of  the  strongest  cannot  be  the  reason  of  exist- 
ence of  anything  which  has  remained  in  full  operation  down  to 
the  present  time.  However  any  of  our  present  institutions  may 
have  begun,  it  can  only,  they  think,  have  been  preserved  to  this 
period  of  advanced  civilization  by  a  well-grounded  feeling  of  its 
adaptation  to  human  nature,  and  conduciveness  to  the  general 
good.  They  do  not  understand  the  great  vitality  and  durability^ 
of  institutions  which  place  right  on  the  side  of  might ;  how  in- 
tensely they  are  clung  to ;  how  the  good  as  well  as  the  bad  pro- 
pensities and  sentiments  of  those  who  have  power  in  their  hands 
become  identified  with  retaining  it ;  how  slowly  these  bad  insti- 


THE   SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  477 

tutions  give  way,  one  at  a  time,  the  weakest  first,  beginning  with 
those  which  are  least  interwoven  with  the  daily  habits  of  life; 
and  how  very  rarely  those  who  have  obtained  legal  power  be- 
cause they  first  had  physical,  have  ever  lost  their  hold  of  it  until 
the  physical  power  had  passed  over  to  the  other  side.  Such 
shifting  of  the  physical  force  not  having  taken  place  in  the  case 
of  women,  this  fact,  combined  with  all  the  peculiar  and  charac- 
teristic features  of  the  particular  case,  made  it  certain  from  the 
first  that  this  branch  of  the  system  of  right  founded  on  might, 
though  softened  in  its  most  atrocious  features  at  an  earlier  period 
than  several  of  the  others,  would  be  the  very  last  to  disappear.  It 
was  inevitable  that  this  one  case  of  a  social  relation  grounded  on 
force  would  survive  through  generations  of  institutions  grounded 
on  equal  justice,  an  almost  solitary  exception  to  the  general  char- 
acter of  their  laws  and  customs ;  but  which,  so  long  as  it  does  not 
proclaim  its  own  origin,  and  as  discussion  has  not  brought  out  its 
true  character,  is  not  felt  to  jar  with  modern  civilization,  any 
more  than  domestic  slavery  among  the  Greeks  jarred  with  their 
notion  of  themselves  as  a  free  people. 

The  truth  is,  that  people  of  the  present  and  the  last  two  or 
three  generations  have  lost  all  practical  sense  of  the  primitive  con- 
dition of  humanity ;  and  only  the  few  who  have  studied  history 
accurately,  or  have  much  frequented  the  parts  of  the  world  oc- 
cupied by  the  living  representatives  of  ages  long  past,  are  able 
to  form  any  mental  picture  of  what  society  then  was.  People 
are  not  aware  how  entirely,  in  former  ages,  the  law  of  superior 
strength  was  the  rule  of  life ;  how  publicly  and  openly  it  was 
avowed,  I  do  not  say  cynically  or  shamelessly  —  for  these  words 
imply  a  feeling  that  there  was  something  in  it  to  be  ashamed  of, 
and  no  such  notion  could  find  a  place  in  the  faculties  of  any  per- 
son in  those  ages,  except  a  philosopher  or  a  saint.  History  givesi' 
a  cruel  experience  of  human  nature,  in  showing  how  exactly  the 
regard  due  to  the  life,  possessions,  and  entire  earthly  happiness  of/ 
any  class  of  persons,  was  measured  by  what  they  had  the  power^. 
of  enforcing;  how  all  who  made  any  resistance  to  authorities 
that  had  arms  in  their  hands,  however  dreadful  might  be  the 


478  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

provocation,  had  not  only  the  law  of  force  but  all  other  laws  and 
cill  the  notions  of  social  obligation  against  them ;  and  in  the  eyes 
of  those  whom  they  resisted,  were  not  only  guUty  of  crime,  but  of 
the  worst  of  all  crimes,  deserving  the  most  cruel  chastisement 
which  human  beings  could  inflict.  The  first  small  vestige  of  aj) 
{  feeling  of  obligation  in  a  superior  to  acknowledge  any  right  in  ' 
'  inferiors,  began  when  he  had  been  induced,  for  convenience,  to 
I  make  some  promise  to  them.  Though  these  promises,  even 
L  when  sanctioned  by  the  most  solemn  oaths,  were  for  many  ages 
revoked  or  violated  on  the  most  trifling  provocation  or  tempta- 
tion, it  is  probable  that  this,  except  by  persons  of  still  worse  than 
the  average  morality,  was  seldom  done  without  some  twinges  of 
conscience.  The  ancient  repubUcs,  being  mostly  grounded  fromH 
the  first  upon  some  kind  of  mutual  compact,  or  at  any  rate 
formed  by  a  union  of  persons  not  very  unequal  in  strength,  af- 
forded, in  consequence,  the  first  instance  of  a  portion  of  human 
relations  fenced  round,  and  placed  under  the  dominion  of  another 
law  than  that  of  force.  And  though  the  original  law  of  force  re-^ 
mained  in  full  operation  between  them  and  their  slaves,  and  also 
(except  so  far  as  limited  by  express  compact)  between  a  common- 
wealth and  its  subjects,  or  other  independent  commonwealths ; 
the  banishment  of  that  primitive  law,  even  from  so  narrow  a  field, 
commenced  the  regeneration  of  human  nature,  by  giving  birth 
to  sentiments  of  which  experience  soon  demonstrated  the  im- 
mense value  even  for  material  interests,  and  which  thencefor- 
ward only  required  to  be  enlarged,  not  created.  Though  slaves! 
were  no  part  of  the  commonwealth,  it  was  in  the  free  states  that  I 
slaves  were  first  felt  to  have  rights  as  human  beings.  The  Stoics  j 
were,  I  believe,  the  first  (except  so  far  as  the  Jewish  law  consti- 
tutes an  exception)  who  taught  as  a  part  of  morality  that  men  were 
bound  by  moral  obligations  to  their  slaves.  No  one,  after  Chris- 
tianity became  ascendant,  could  ever  again  have  been  a  stranger 
to  this  belief,  in  theory ;  nor,  after  the  rise  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
was  it  ever  without  persons  to  stand  up  for  it.  Yet  to  enforce  it 
was  the  most  arduous  task  which  Christianity  ever  had  to  per- 
form.    For  more  than  a  thousand  years  the  Church  kept  up  the 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF  WOMEN  479 

contest,  with  hardly  any  perceptible  success.  It  was  not  for 
want  of  power  over  men's  minds.  Its  power  was  prodigious.  It 
could  make  kings  and  nobles  resign  their  most  valued  posses- 
sions to  enrich  the  Church.  It  could  make  thousands,  in  the 
prime  of  life  and  the  height  of  worldly  advantages,  shut  them- 
selves up  in  convents  to  work  out  their  salvation  by  poverty, 
fasting,  and  prayer.  It  could  send  hundreds  of  thousands  across 
land  and  sea,  Europe  and  Asia,  to  give  their  lives  for  the  deliver- 
ance of  the  Holy  Sepulcher.  It  could  make  kings  relinquish 
wives  who  were  the  object  of  their  passionate  attachment,  be- 
cause the  Church  declared  that  they  were  within  the  seventh 
(by  our  calculation  the  fourteenth)  degree  of  relationship.  All^ 
this  it  did ;  but  it  could  not  make  men  fight  less  with  one  another, 
nor  tyrannize  less  cruelly  over  the  serfs,  and  when  they  were  able, 
'over  burgesses.  It  could  not  make  them  renounce  either  of  the 
applications  of  force :  force  militant,  or  force  triumphant.  This 
they  could  never  be  induced  to  do  until  they  were  themselves  in 
their  turn  com.pelled  by  superior  force.  Only  by  the  growing 
power  of  kings  was  an  end  put  to  fighting  except  between  kings, 
or  competitors  for  kingship ;  only  by  the  growth  of  a  wealthy  and 
warlike  bourgeoisie  in  the  fortified  towns,  and  of  a  plebeian  in- 
fantry which  proved  more  powerful  in  the  field  than  the  undis^ 
cipUned  chivalry,  was  the  insolent  tyranny  of  the  nobles  over  the 
bourgeoisie  and  peasantry  brought  within  some  bounds.  It  was 
persisted  in  not  only  until,  but  long  after,  the  oppressed  had  ob- 
tained a  power  enabling  them  often  to  take  conspicuous  venge- 
ance ;  and  on  the  Continent  much  of  it  continued  to  the  time  of 
the  French  Revolution,  though  in  England  the  earlier  and  better 
organization  of  the  democratic  classes  put  an  end  to  it  sooner,  by 
establishing  equal  laws  and  free  national  institutions. 

If  people  are  mostly  so  little  aware  how  completely,  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  duration  of  our  species,  the  law  of  force  was 
the  avowed  rule  of  general  conduct,  any  other  being  only  a  special 
and  exceptional  consequence  of  peculiar  ties  —  and  from  how 
very  recent  a  date  it  is  that  the  affairs  of  society  in  general  have 
been  even  pretended  to  be  regulated  according  to  any  moral  law ; 


i 


480  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

as  little  do  people  remember  or  consider  how  institutions  and  cus- 
toms which  never  had  any  ground  but  the  law  of  force,  last  on 
into  ages  and  states  of  general  opinion  which  never  would  have 
permitted  their  first  establishment.  Less  than  forty  years  ago, 
Englishmen  might  still  by  law  hold  human  beings  in  bondage  as 
salable  property:  within  the  present  century  they  might  kid- 
nap them  and  carry  them  off,  and  work  them  literally  to  death. 
This  absolutely  extreme  case  of  the  law  of  force,  condemned 
by  those  who  can  tolerate  almost  every  other  form  of  arbi- 
trary power,  and  which,  of  all  others,  presents  features  the 
most  revolting  to  the  feelings  of  all  who  look  at  it  from  an  im- 
partial position,  was  the  law  of  civilized  and  Christian  Eng- 
land within  the  memory  of  persons  now  living ;  and  in  one  half 
of  Anglo-Saxon  America  three  or  four  years  ago,  not  only  did 
slavery  exist,  but  the  slave  trade,  and  the  breeding  of  slaves  ex- 
pressly for  it,  was  a  general  practice  between  slave  states.  Yet 
not  only  was  there  a  greater  strength  of  sentiment  against  it,  but 
in  England,  at  least,  a  less  amount  either  of  feeling  or  of  interest  in 
favor  of  it,  than  of  any  other  of  the  customary  abuses  of  force : 
for  its  motive  was  the  love  of  gain,  unmixed  and  undisguised ;  and 
those  who  profited  by  it  were  a  very  small  numerical  fraction  of 
the  country,  while  the  natural  feeling  of  all  who  were  not  per- 
sonally interested  in  it,  was  unmitigated  abhorrence.  So  ex- 
treme an  instance  makes  it  almost  superfluous  to  refer  to  any 
other :  but  consider  the  long  duration  of  absolute  monarchy.  In 
[England  at  present  it  is  the  almost  universal  conviction  that 
^  !  military  despotism  is  a  case  of  the  law  of  force,  having  no  other 
origin  or  justification.  Yet  in  all  the  great  nations  of  Europe 
except  England  it  either  still  exists,  or  has  only  just  ceased  to 
exist,  and  has  even  now  a  strong  party  favorable  to  it  in  all  ranks 
of  the  people,  especially  among  persons  of  station  and  conse- 
quence. Such  is  the  power  of  an  estabhshed  system,  even  when 
far  from  universal ;  when  not  only  in  almost  every  period  of  his- 
tory there  have  been  great  and  well-known  examples  of  the  con- 
trary system,  but  these  have  almost  invariably  been  afforded  by 
the  most  illustrious  and  most  prosperous  communities.     In  this 


^ 


THE   SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  481 

case,  too,  the  possessor  of  the  undue  power,  the  person  directly 
interested  in  it,  is  only  one  person,  while  those  who  are  subject 
to  jt  and  suffer  from  it  are  literally  all  the  rest.  The  yoke  is 
naturally  and  necessarily  humiliating  to  all  persons,  except  the 
one  who  is  on  the  throne,  together  with,  at  most,  the  one  who 
expects  to  succeed  to  it.  How  different  are  these  cases  from  that  J 
_ofjLlie_power  of  men  over  women  !  I  am  not  now  prejudging  the 
question  of  its  justifiableness.  I  am  showing  how  vastly  more 
permanent  it  could  not  but  be,  even  if  not  justifiable,  than  these 
other  dominations  which  have  nevertheless  lasted  down  to  our 
own  time.  Whatever  gratification  of  pride  there  is  in  the 
possession  of  power,  and  whatever  personal  interest  in  its  1 
exercise,  is  in  this  case  not  confined  to  a  limited  class,  but  com-  ' 
inonJLo  the  whole  male  sex.  Instead  of  being,  to  most  of  its 
supporters,  a  thing  desirable  chiefly  in  the  abstract,  or,  like  the 
political  ends  usually  contended  for  by  factions,  of  little  private 
importance  to  any  but  the  leaders ;  it  comes  home  to  the  person 
and  hearth  of  every  male  head  of  a  family,  and  of  every  one  who 
looks  forward  to  being  so.  The  clodhopper  exercises,  or  is  to 
exercise,  his  share  of  the  power  equally  with  the  highest  nobleman. 
And  the  case  is  that  in  which  the  desire  of  power  is  the  strongest : 
for  every  one  who  desires  power,  desires  it  most  over  those  who 
are  nearest  to  him,  with  whom  his  life  is  passed,  with  whom  he  has 
most  concerns  in  common,  and  in  whom  any  independence  of 
his  authority  is  oftenest  likely  to  interfere  with  his  individual 
preferences.  If,  in  the  other  cases  specified,  powers  manifestly 
grounded  only  on  force,  and  having  so  much  less  to  support  them, 
are  so  slowly  and  with  so  much  difficulty  got  rid  of,  much  more 
must  it  be  so  with  this,  even  if  it  rests  on  no  better  foundation 
than  those.  We  must  consider,  too,  that  the  possessors  of  the 
power  have  facilities  in  this  case,  greater  than  in  any  other,  to 
prevent  any  uprising  against  it.  Every  one  of  the  subjects 
lives  under  the  very  eye,  and  almost,  it  may  be  said,  in  the 
hands,  of  one  of  the  masters  —  in  closer  intimacy  with  him  than 
with  any  of  her  fellow-subjects;  with  no  means  of  combin- 
ing against  him,  no  power  of  even  locally  overmastering  him, 


482  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

and,  on  the  other  hand,  with  the  strongest  motives  for  seeking 
his  favor  and  avoiding  to  give  him  offense.  In  struggles  for  po- 
litical emancipation,  everybody  knows  how  often  its  champions 
are  bought  off  by  bribes,  or  daunted  by  terrors.  In  the  case  of 
women,  each  individual  of  the  subject  class  is  in  a  chronic  state 
of  bribery  and  intimidation  combined.     In  setting  up  the  stand- 

\_ard  of  resistance,  a  large  number  of  the  leaders,  and  still  more  of 
the  followers,  must  make  an  almost  complete  sacrifice  of  the 
pleasures  or  the  alleviations  of  their  own  individual  lot.  If  ever 
any  system  of  privilege  and  enforced  subjection  had  its  yoke 
tightly  riveted  on  the  necks  of  those  who  are  kept  down  by  it, 
this  has.  I  have  not  yet  shown  that  it  is  a  wrong  system ;  but 
every  one  who  is  capable  of  thinking  on  the  subject  must  see  that 
even  if  it  is,  it  was  certain  to  outlast  all  other  forms  of  unjust  au- 
thority. And  when  some  of  the  grossest  of  the  other  forms  still 
exist  in  many  civilized  countries,  and  have  only  recently  been 
got  rid  of  in  others,  it  would  be  strange  if  that  which  is  so  much 
the  deepest  rooted  had  yet  been  perceptibly  shaken  anywhere. 
There  is  more  reason  to  wonder  that  the  protests  and  testimonies 
against  it  should  have  been  so  numerous  and  so  weighty  as  they 
are. 

Some  will  object,  that  a  comparison  cannot  fairly  be  made  be- 
tween the  government  of  the  male  sex  and  the  forms  of  unjust 
power  which  I  have  adduced  in  illustration  of  it,  since  these  are 
arbitrary,  and  the  effect  of  mere  usurpation,  while  it  on  the  con- 
trary is  natural.  But  was  there  ever  any  domination  which  did 
not  appear  natural  to  those  who  possessed  it  ?  There  was  a  time 
when  the  division  of  mankind  into  two  classes,  a  small  one  of 
masters  and  a  numerous  one  of  slaves,  appeared,  even  to  the  most 
cultivated  minds,  to  be  a  natural,  and  the  only  natural,  condition^ 
of  the  human  race.  No  less  an  intellect,  and  one  which  contrib- 
uted no  less  to  the  progress  of  human  thought,  than  Aristotle, 
held  this  opinion  without  doubt  or  misgiving ;  and  rested  it  on 

1  the  same  premises  on  which  the  same  assertion  in  regard  to  thel 
dominion  of  men  over  women  is  usually  based,  namely,  that  there_ 
are  different  natures  among  mankind,  free  natures,  and  slave 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN  483 

natures ;  that  the  Greeks  were  of  a  free  nature,  the  barbarian 
races  of  Thracians  and  Asiatics  of  a  slave  nature.  But  why  need 
I  go  back  to  Aristotle  ?  Did  not  the  slave  owners  of  the  south- 
ern United  States  maintain  the  same  doctrine,  with  all  the  fanat- 
icism with  which  men  cling  to  the  theories  that  justify  their  J 

/passions  and  legitimate  their  personal  interests  ?  Did  they  not 
call  heaven  and  earth  to  witness  that  the  dominion  of  the  white 
man  over  the  black  is  natural,  that  the  black  race  is  by  nature 
incapable  of  freedom,  and  marked  out  for  slavery  ?  —  some  even 
going  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  freedom  of  manual  laborers  is  an    ^ 

VjLinnatural  order  of  things  anywhere.     Again,  the  theorists  of  ab--^"^ 
solute  monarchy  have  always  affirmed  it  to  be  the  only  natural 
form  of  government ;  issuing  from  the  patriarchal,  which  was 

Vthe  primitive  and  spontaneous  form  of  society,  framed  on  the 
model  of  the  paternal,  which  is  anterior  to  society  itself,  and,  as 
they  contend,  the  most  natural  authority  of  all.  Nay,  for  that 
matter,  the  law  of  force  itself,  to  those  who  could  not  plead  any 
other,  has  always  seemed  the  most  natural  of  all  grounds  for  the 
exercise  of  authority.  Conquering  races  hold  it  to  be  nature's 
own  dictate  that  the  conquered  should  obey  the  conquerors,  or, 
as  they  euphoniously  paraphrase  it,  that  the  feebler  and  more 
un warlike  races  should  submit  to  the  braver  and  manlier.  The  —7 
smallest  acquaintance  with  human  life  in  the  Middle  Ages  shows  [  )f 
how  supremely  natural  the  dominion  of  the  feudal  nobility  over 
men  of  low  condition  appeared  to  the  nobility  themselves,  and 
how  unnatural  the  conception  seemed  of  a  person  of  the  inferior 
class  claiming  equality  with  them,  or  exercising  authority  over 
them.  It  hardly  seemed  less  so  to  the  class  held  in  subjection. 
The  emancipated  serfs  and  burgesses,  even  in  their  most  vigorous 
struggles,  never  made  any  pretension  to  a  share  of  authority; 
they  only  demanded  more  or  less  limitation  to  the  power  of 
tyrannizing  over  them.  So  true  is  it  that  unnatural  generally 
means  only  uncustomary,  and  that  everything  which  is  usual 
\/  \  appeai^^atural.  The  subjection  of  women  to  men  being  a  uni- 
versal custom,  any  departure  from  it  quite  naturally  appears 
unnatural.     But  how  entirely,  even  in  this  case,  the  feeling  is 


484  JOHN  STUART  :MILL 

dependent  on  custom,  appears  by  ample  experience.  Nothing 
so  much  astonishes  the  people  of  distant  parts  of  the  world,  when 
they  first  learn  anything  about  England,  as  to  be  told  that  it  is 
under  a  queen ;  the  thing  seems  to  them  so  unnatural  as  to  be 
almost  incredible.  To  Enghshmen  this  does  not  seem  in  the 
least  degree  unnatural,  because  they  are  used  to  it ;  but  they  do 
feel  it  unnatural  that  women  should  be  soldiers  or  members  of 
Parhament.  In  the  feudal  ages,  on  the  contrary,  war  and  politics 
were  not  thought  unnatural  to  women,  because  not  unusual ;  it 
seemed  natural  that  women  of  the  pri\dleged  classes  should  be 
of  manly  character,  inferior  in  nothing  but  bodily  strength  to 
their  husbands  and  fathers.  The  independence  of  women  seemed 
rather  less  unnatural  to  the  Greeks  than  to  other  ancients,  on 
account  of  the  fabulous  Amazons  (whom  they  believed  to  be  his- 
torical), and  the  partial  example  afforded  by  the  Spartan  women ; 
who,  though  no  less  subordinate  by  law  than  in  other  Greek 
states,  were  more  free  in  fact ;  and  being  trained  to  bodily  exer- 
cises in  the  same  manner  -^ith  men,  gave  ample  proof  that  they 
were  not  naturally  disqualified  for  them.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  Spartan  experience  suggested  to  Plato,  among  many 
other  of  his  doctrines,  that  of  the  social  and  political  equaUty  of 
the  two  sexes. 

But,  it  will  be  said,  the  rule  of  men  over  women  differs  from  all " 
these  others  in  not  being  a  rule  of  force  :  it  is  accepted  voluntarily ; 
women  make  no  complaint,  and  are  consenting  parties  to  it.  In 
the  first  place,  a  great  number  of  women  do  not  accept  it.  Ever 
since  there  have  been  women  able  to  make  their  sentiments 
known  by  their  writings  (the  only  mode  of  publicity  which  so- 
ciety permits  to  them),  an  increasing  number  of  them  have 
recorded  protests  against  their  present  social  condition  :  and  re- 
cently many  thousands  of  them,  headed  by  the  most  eminent 
women  known  to  the  public,  have  petitioned  Parliament  for 
their  admission  to  the  Parliamentary  suffrage.  The  claim  of 
women  to  be  educated  as  solidly,  and  in  the  same  branches  of 
knowledge,  as  men,  is  urged  with  gro\\ang  intensity,  and  with  a 
great  prospect  of  success ;  while  the  demand  for  their  admission 


THE   SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  485 

into  professions  and  occupations  hitherto  closed  against  them, 
becomes  every  year  more  urgent.  Though  there  are  not  in  this 
country,  as  there  are  in  the  United  States,  periodical  conventions 
and  an  organized  party  to  agitate  for  the  rights  of  women,  there 
is  a  numerous  and  active  society  organized  and  managed  by 
women,  for  the  more  limited  object  of  obtaining  the  political 
franchise.  Nor  is  it  only  in  our  own  country  and  in  America 
that  women  are  beginning  to  protest,  more  or  less  collectively, 
against  the  disabilities  under  which  they  labor.  France,  and 
Italy,  and  Switzerland,  and  Russia  now  afford  examples  of  the 
same  thing.  How  many  more  women  there  are  who  silently 
cherish  similar  aspirations,  no  one  can  possibly  know ;  but  there 
are  abundant  tokens  how  many  would  cherish  them,  were  they 
not  so  strenuously  taught  to  repress  them  as  contrary  to  the 
proprieties  of  their  sex.  It  must  be  remembered,  also,  that  no 
enslaved  class  ever  asked  for  complete  liberty  at  once.  When 
Simon  de  Montfort  called  the  deputies  of  the  commons  to  sit 
for  the  first  time  in  Parliament,  did  any  of  them  dream  of  de- 
manding that  an  assembly,  elected  by  their  constituents,  should 
make  and  destroy  ministries,  and  dictate  to  the  king  in  affairs  of 
state?  No  such  thought  entered  into  the  imagination  of  the 
most  ambitious  of  them.  The  nobility  had  already  these  pre- 
tensions ;  the  commons  pretended  to  nothing  but  to  be  exempt 
from  arbitrary  taxation,  and  from  the  gross  individual  oppres- 
sion of  the  king's  officers.  It  is  a  political  law  of  nature  that 
those  who  are  under  any  power  of  ancient  origin,  never  begin  by 
complaining  of  the  power  itself,  but  only  of  its  oppressive  exer- 
cise. There  is  never  any  want  of  women  who  complain  of  ill 
usage  by  their  husbands.  There  would  be  infinitely  more,  if 
complaint  were  not  the  greatest  of  all  provocatives  to  a  repeti- 
tion and  increase  of  the  ill  usage.  It  is  this  which  frustrates  all 
attempts  to  maintain  the  power  but  protect  the  woman  against 
its  abuses.  In  no  other  case  (except  that  of  a  child)  is  the  person 
who  has  been  proved  judicially  to  have  suffered  an  injury,  re- 
placed under  the  physical  power  of  the  culprit  who  inflicted  it. 
Accordingly  wives,  even  in  the  most  extreme  and  protracted 


486  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

cases  of  bodily  ill  usage,  hardly  ever  dare  avail  themselves  of  the 
laws  made  for  their  protection  ;  and  if,  in  a  moment  of  irrepressible 
indignation,  or  by  the  interference  of  neighbors,  they  are  induced 
to  do  so,  their  whole  effort  afterwards  is  to  disclose  as  little  as  they 
can,  and  to  beg  off  their  tyrant  from  his  merited  chastisement. 

All  causes,  social  and  natural,  combine  to  make  it  unlikely 
that  women  should  be  collectively  rebellious  to  the  power  of  men. 
They  are  so  far  in  a  position  different  from  all  other  subject 
classes,  that  their  masters  require  something  more  from  them 
than  actual  service.  Men  do  not  want  solely  the  obedience  of 
women,  they  want  their  sentiments.  All  men,  except  the  most 
brutish,  desire  to  have,  in  the  woman  most  nearly  connected  with 
them,  not  a  forced  slave  but  a  willing  one,  not  a  slave  merely, 
but  a  favorite.  They  have  therefore  put  everything  in  prac- 
tice to  enslave  their  minds.  The  masters  of  all  other  slaves  rely, 
for  maintaining  obedience,  on  fear,  —  either  fear  of  themselves, 
or  religious  fears.  The  masters  of  women  wanted  more  than 
simple  obedience,  and  they  turned  the  whole  force  of  education 
to  effect  their  purpose.  All  women  are  brought  up  from  the  very 
earliest  years  in  the  behef  that  their  ideal  of  character  is  the 
very  opposite  to  that  of  men ;  not  self-will  and  government  by  i 
self-control,  but  submission  and  yielding  to  the  control  of  others. 
All  the  moralities  tell  them  that  it  is  the  duty  of  women,  and  all 
the  current  sentimentalities  that  it  is  their  nature,  to  live  for 
others,  to  make  complete  abnegation  of  themselves,  and  to  have 
no  life  but  in  their  affections.  And  by  their  affections  are  meant 
the  only  ones  they  are  allowed  to  have  —  those  to  the  men  with 
whom  they  are  connected,  or  to  the  children  who  constitute  an 
additional  and  indefeasible  tie  between  them  and  a  man.  When 
we  put  together  three  things  —  first,  the  natural  attraction  be- 
tween opposite  sexes ;  secondly,  the  wife's  entire  dependence  on 
the  husband,  every  privilege  or  pleasure  she  has  being  either  his 
gift,  or  depending  entirely  on  his  will ;  and  lastly,  that  the  princi- 
pal object  of  human  pursuit,  consideration,  and  all  objects  of  so- 
cial ambition,  can  in  general  be  sought  or  obtained  by  her  only 
through  him,  it  would  be  a   miracle  if  the  object  of  being 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN  487 

attractive  to  men  had  not  become  the  polar  star  of  feminine 
education  and  formation  of  character.  And  this  great  means  of 
influence  over  the  minds  of  women  having  been  acquired,  an  in- 
stinct of  selfishness  made  men  avail  themselves  of  it  to  the  utmost 
as  a  means  of  holding  women  in  subjection,  by  representing  to 
\  them  meekness,  submissiveness,  and  resignation  of  all  individual 
/will  into  the  hands  of  a  man,  as  an  essential  part  of  sexual  at- 
■^tractiveness.  Can  it  be  doubted  that  any  of  the  other  yokes 
which  mankind  have  succeeded  in  breaking,  would  have  sub- 
sisted till  now  if  the  same  means  had  existed,  and  had  been  as 
sedulously  used,  to  bow  down  their  minds  to  it  ?  If  it  had  been 
made  the  object  of  the  life  of  every  young  plebeian  to  find  per- 
sonal favor  in  the  eyes  of  some  patrician,  of  every  young  serf  with 
some  seigneur;  if  domestication  with  him,  and  a  share  of  his 
personal  affections,  had  been  held  out  as  the  prize  which  they  all 
should  look  out  for,  the  most  gifted  and  aspiring  being  able  to 
reckon  on  the  most  desirable  prizes  ;  and  if,  when  this  prize  had 
been  obtained,  they  had  been  shut  out  by  a  wall  of  brass  from  all 
interests  not  centering  in  him,  all  feelings  and  desires  but  those 
which  he  shared  or  inculcated ;  would  not  serfs  and  seigneurs, 
plebeians  and  patricians,  have  been  as  broadly  distinguished  at 
this  day  as  men  and  women  are?  And  would  not  all  but  a 
thinker  here  and  there  have  believed  the  distinction  to  be  a 
fundamental  and  unalterable  fact  in  human  nature? 

The  preceding  considerations  are  amply  sufficient  to  show  that 
custom,  however  universal  it  may  be,  affords  in  this  case  no  pre- 
sumption, and  ought  not  to  create  any  prejudice,  in  favor  of  the 
arrangements  which  place  women  in  social  and  political  subjec- 
tion to  men.     But  I  may  go  further,  and  maintain  that  the 
course  of  history,  and  the  tendencies  of  progressive  human  so-  J 
ciety,  afford  not  only  no  presumption  in  favor  of  this  system  of 
inequality  of  rights,  but  a  strong  one  against  it ;  and  that,  so  far 
as  the  whole  course  of  human  improvement  up  to  this  time,  the 
whole  stream  of  modern  tendencies,  warrants  any  inference  on    ^     < 
the  subject,  it  is,  that  this  relic  of  the  past  is  discordant  with  the         '^'• 
future,  and  must  necessarily  disappear. 


488  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

For,  what  is  the  pecuHar  character  of  the  modern  world  —  the 
difference  which  chiefly  distinguishes  modern  institutions,  mod- 
ern social  ideas,  modern  life  itself,  from  those  of  times  long  past  ? 
It  is,  that  human  beings  are  no  longer  born  to  their  place  in  life,' 
and  chained  down  by  an  inexorable  bond  to  the  place  they  are 
born  to,  but  are  free  to  employ  their  faculties,  and  such  favorable 
chances  as  offer,  to  achieve  the  lot  which  may  appear  to  them 
most  desirable.  Human  society  of  old  was  constituted  on  a  very 
different  principle.  All  were  born  to  a  fixed  social  position,  and 
were  mostly  kept  in  it  by  law,  or  interdicted  from  any  means  by 
which  they  could  emerge  from  it.  As  some  men  are  born  white 
and  others  black,  so  some  were  born  slaves  and  others  freemen 
and  citizens ;  some  were  born  patricians,  others  plebeians ;  some 
were  born  feudal  nobles,  others  commoners  and  roturiers}  A 
slave  or  serf  could  never  make  himself  free,  nor,  except  by  the 
will  of  his  master,  become  so.  In  most  European  countries  it 
was  not  till  towards  the  close  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence of  the  growth  of  regal  power,  that  commoners  could  be 
ennobled.  Even  among  nobles,  the  eldest  son  was  born  the  ex- 
clusive heir  to  the  paternal  possessions,  and  a  long  time  elapsed 
before  it  was  fully  established  that  the  father  could  disinherit 
him.  Among  the  industrious  classes,  only  those  who  were  born 
members  of  a  guild,  or  were  admitted  into  it  by  its  members, 
could  lawfully  practice  their  calling  within  its  local  limits ;  and 
nobody  could  practice  any  calling  deemed  important  in  any 
but  the  legal  manner  —  by  processes  authoritatively  prescribed. 
Manufacturers  have  stood  in  the  pillory  for  presuming  to  carry 
on  their  business  by  new  and  improved  methods.  In  modern 
Europe,  and  most  in  those  parts  of  it  which  have  participated 
most  largely  in  all  other  modern  improvements,  diametrically 
opposite  doctrines  now  prevail.  Law  and  government  do  not 
undertake  to  prescribe  by  whom  any  social  or  industrial  opera- 
tion shall  or  shall  not  be  conducted,  or  what  modes  of  conduct- 
ing them  shall  be  lawful.  These  things  are  left  to  the  unfet- 
tered choice  of  individuals.     Even  the  laws  which  required  that 

^  Plebeians.  —  Editors, 


1  \ 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN  489 

workmen  should  serve  an  apprenticeship,  have  in  this  country 
been  repealed :  there  being  ample  assurance  that  in  all  cases 
in  which  an  apprenticeship  is  necessary,  its  necessity  will  suf- 
fice to  enforce  it.  The  old^heory  was,  that  the  least  possible  _J 
should  be  left  to  the  choice  of  the  individual  agent ;  that  all  he 
had  to  do  should,  as  far  as  practicable,  be  laid  down  for  him  by  , 
superior  wisdom.  Left  to  himself  he  was  sure  to  go  wrong.  The 
modern  conviction,  the  fruit  of  a  thousand  years  of  experience, 
is,  that  things  in  which  the  individual  is  the  person  directly  in- 
terested, never  go  right  but  as  they  are  left  to  his  own  discretion ; 
and  that  any  regulation  of  them  by  authority,  except  to  protect 
the  rights  of  others,  is  sure  to  be  mischievous.  This  conclusion, 
slowly  arrived  at,  and  not  adopted  until  almost  every  possible 
application  of  the  contrary  theory  had  been  made  with  disastrous 
result,  now  (in  the  industrial  department)  prevails  universally  in 
the  most  advanced  countries,  almost  universally  in  all  that  have 
pretensions  to  any  sort  of  advancement.  It  is  not  that  all  pro- 
cesses are  supposed  to  be  equally  good,  or  all  persons  to  be  equally 
qualified  for  everything ;  but  that  freedom  of  individual  choice 
is  now  known  to  be  the  only  thing  which  procures  the  adoption.^ 
of  the  best  processes,  and  throws  each  operation  into  the  hands 
of  those  who  are  best  qualified  for  it.  Nobody  thinks  it  nec- 
essary to  make  a  law  that  only  a  strong-armed  man  shall  be  a 
blacksmxith.  Freedom  and  competition  suffice  to  make  black- 
smiths strong-armed  men,  because  the  weak-armed  can  earn 
more  by  engaging  in  occupations  for  which  they  are  more  fit.  In 
consonance  with  this  doctrine,  it  is  felt  to  be  an  overstepping 
of  the  proper  bounds  of  authority  to  fix  beforehand,  on  some 
general  presumption,  that  certain  persons  are  not  fit  to  do  cer- 
tain things.  It  is  now  thoroughly  known  and  admitted  that  if 
some  such  presumptions  exist,  no  such  presumption  is  infallible. 
Even  if  it  be  well  grounded  in  a  majority  of  cases,  which  it  is  very 
likely  not  to  be,  there  will  be  a  minority  of  exceptional  cases  in 
which  it  does  not  hold :  and  in  those  it  isjjoth  an  injustice  to  the 
individuals,  and  a  detriment  to  society,  to  place  barriers  in  the 
way  of  their  using  their  faculties  for  their  own  benefit  and  for  that 


490  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

of  others.  In  the  cases,  on  the  other  hand,  in  which  the  unfit- 
ness is  real,  the  ordinary  motives  of  human  conduct  will  on  the 
whole  suffice  to  prevent  the  incompetent  person  from  making, 
or  from  persisting  in,  the  attempt. 

i  If  this  general  principle  of  social  and  economical  science  is 

not  true ;  if  individuals,  with  such  help  as  they  can  derive  from 
the  opinion  of  those  who  know  them,  are  not  better  judges  than 
the  law  and  the  government,  of  their  own  capacities  and  voca- 
tion ;  the  world  cannot  too  soon  abandon  this  principle,  and  re- 
turn to  the  old  system  of  regulations  and  disabilities.     But  if 

Vi  the  principle  is  true,  we  ought  to  act  as  if  we  believed  it,  and  not 
to  ordain  that  to  be  born  a  girl  instead  of  a  boy,  any  more  than 
to  be  born  black  instead  of  white,  or  a  commoner  instead  of  a 
nobleman,  shall  decide  the  person's  position  through  all  life  — 
shall  interdict  people  from  all  the  more  elevated  social  positions, 
and  from  all,  except  a  few,  respectable  occupations.  Even  were 
we  to  admit  the  utmost  that  is  ever  pretended  as  to  the  superior 
fitness  of  men  for  all  the  functions  now  reserved  to  them,  the 
same  argument  applies  which  forbids  a  legal  qualification  for 
members  of  Parliament.  If  only  once  in  a  dozen  years  the  condi- 
tions of  eligibility  exclude  a  fit  person,  there  is  a  real  loss,  while 
the  exclusion  of  thousands  of  unfit  persons  is  no  gain ;  for  if  the 
constitution  of  the  electoral  body  disposes  them  to  choose  unfit 
persons,  there  are  always  plenty  of  such  persons  to  choose  from. 
In  all  things  of  any  difficulty  and  importance,  those  who  can  do 
them  well  are  fewer  than  the  need,  even  with  the  most  unre- 
stricted latitude  of  choice ;  and  any  limitation  of  the  field  of  se- 
lection deprives  society  of  some  chances  of  being  served  by  the 
competent,  without  ever  saving  it  from  the  incompetent. 

At  present,  in  the  more  improved  countries,  the  disabilities  of 
women  are  the  only  case,  save  one,  in  which  laws  and  institutions 
take  persons  at  their  birth,  and  ordain  that  they  shall  never  in  all 
their  lives  be  allowed  to  compete  for  certain  things.  The  one 
exception  is  that  of  royalty.  Persons  still  are  born  to  the  throne ;-' 
no  one,  not  of  the  reigning  family,  can  ever  occupy  it,  and  no  one 
even  of  that  family  can,  by  any  means  but  the  course  of  heredi- 


THE  SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  491 

tary  succession,  attain  it.  All  other  dignities  and  social  advan- 
tages are  open  to  the  whole  male  sex ;  many  indeed  are  only  at- 
tainable by  wealth,  but  wealth  may  be  striven  for  by  any  one, 
and  is  actually  obtained  by  many  men  of  the  very  humblest 
origin.  The  difficulties,  to  the  majority,  are  indeed  insuperable 
without  the  aid  of  fortunate  accidents ;  but  no  male  human  being 
is  under  any  legal  ban ;  neither  law  nor  opinion  superadd  ar- 
tificial obstacles  to  the  natural  ones.  Royalty,  as  I  have  said,  is 
excepted ;  but  in  this  case  every  one  feels  it  to  be  an  exception  — 
an  anomaly  in  the  modern  world,  in  marked  opposition  to  its  cus- 
toms and  principles,  and  to  be  justified  only  by  extraordinary  spe- 
cial expediencies,  which,  though  individuals  and  nations  differ  in 
estimating  their  weight,  unquestionably  do  in  fact  exist.  But 
in  this  exceptional  case,  in  which  a  high  social  function  is,  for 
important  reasons,  bestowed  on  birth  instead  of  being  put  up  to 
competition,  all  free  nations  contrive  to  adhere  in  substance  to 
the  principle  from  which  they  nominally  derogate ;  for  they  cir- 
cumscribe this  high  function  by  conditions  avowedly  intended  to 
prevent  the  person  to  whom  it  ostensibly  belongs  from  really 
performing  it ;  while  the  person  by  whom  it  is  performed,  the 
responsible  minister,  does  obtain  the  post  by  a  competition 
from  which  no  full-grown  citizen  of  the  male  sex  is  legally  ex- 
cluded. The  disabilities,  therefore,  to  which  women  are  subject 
from  the  mere  fact  of  their  birth,  are  the  solitary  examples  of  the 
kind  in  modern  legislation.  In  no  instance  except  this,  which 
comprehends  half  the  human  race,  are  the  higher  social  functions 
closed  against  any  one  by  a  fatality  of  birth  which  no  exertions, 
and  no  change  of  circumstances,  can  overcome ;  for  even  reli- 
gious disabilities  (besides  that  in  England  and  in  Europe  they 
have  practically  almost  ceased  to  exist)  do  not  close  any  career 
to  the  disqualified  person  in  case  of  conversion. 

The  social  subordination  of  women  thus  stands  out  an  isolated 
fact  in  modern  social  institutions ;  a  solitary  breach  of  what  has 
become  their  fundamental  law ;  a  single  relic  of  an  old  world  of 
thought  and  practice  exploded  in  everything  else,  but  retained 
in  the  one  thing  of  most  universal  interest;    as  if  a  gigantic 


492  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

dolmen,  or  a  vast  temple  of  Jupiter  Olympus,  occupied  the  site 
of  St.  Paul's  and  received  daily  worship,  while  the  surrounding 
Christian  churches  were  only  resorted  to  on  fasts  and  festivals. 
This  entire  discrepancy  between  one  social  fact  and  all  those 
which  accompany  it,  and  the  radical  opposition  between  its 
nature  and  the  progressive  movement  which  is  the  boast  of  the 
modern  world,  and  which  has  successively  swept  away  every- 
thing else  of  an  analogous  character,  surely  affords,  to  a  conscien- 
tious observer  of  human  tendencies,  serious  matter  for  reflection. 
It  raises  a  prima  facie  presumption  on  the  unfavorable  side,  far 
outweighing  any  which  custom  and  usage  could  in  such  circum- 
stances create  on  the  favorable;  and  should  at  least  suffice  to 
make  this,  hke  the  choice  between  republicanism  and  royalty, 
a  balanced  question.  <^ 

The  least  that  can  be  demanded  is,  that  the  question  should 
not  be  considered  as  prejudged  by  existing  fact  and  existing 
opinion,  but  open  to  discussion  on  its  merits,  as  a  question  of 
justice  and  expediency ;    the  decision  on  this,  as  on  any  of  the 
other  social  arrangements  of  mankind,  depending  on  what  an 
enlightened  estimate  of  tendencies  and  consequences  may  show 
to  be  most  advantageous  to  humanity  in  general,  without  dis- 
tinction of  sex.     And  the  discussion  must  be  a  real  discussion, 
descending  to  foundations,  and  not  resting  satisfied  with  vague 
and  general  assertions.     It  will  not  do,  for  instance,  to  assert 
in  general  terms,  that  the  experience  of  mankind  has  pronounced  - 
in  favor  of  the  existing  system.     Experience  cannot  possibly;  ' 
have  decided  between  two  courses,  so  long  as  there  has  only'        , 
been  experience  of  one.     If  it  be  said  that  the  doctrine  of  the"^ 
equality  of  the  sexes  rests  only  on  theory,  it  must  be  remembered  y^t^ 
that  the  contrary  doctrine  also  has  only  theory  to  rest  upon. 
All  that  is  proved  in  its  favor  by  direct  experience,  is  that  man- 
kind have  been  able  to  exist  under  it,  and  to  attain  the  degree  of 
improvement  and  prosperity  which  we  now  see;    but  whether 
that  prosperity  has  been  attained  sooner,  or  is  now  greater,  than 
it  would  have  been  under  the  other  system,  experience  does  not 
say.    On  the  other  hand,  experience  does  say,  that  every  step  in 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN  493 

improvement  has  been  so  invariably  accompanied  by  a  step  made 
in  raising  the  social  position  of  women,  that  historians  and  phi- 
losophers have  been  led  to  adopt  their  elevation  or  debasement 
as  on  the  whole  the  surest  test  and  most  correct  measure  of  the 
civilization  of  a  people  or  an  age.  Through  all  the  progressive 
period  of  human  history,  the  condition  of  women  has  been  ap- 
proaching nearer  to  equality  with  men.  This  does  not  of  itself 
prove  that  the  assimilation  must  go  on  to  complete  equality; 
but  it  assuredly  affords  some  presumption  that  such  is  the  case. 
Neither  does  it  avail  anything  to  say  that  the  nature  of  the  two 
sexes  adapts  them  to  their  present  functions  and  position,  and 
renders  these  appropriate  to  them.  Standing  on  the  ground  of 
common  sense  and  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind,  I  deny 
that  any  one  knows,  or  can  know,  the  nature  of  the  two  sexes, 
as  long  as  they  have  only  been  seen  in  their  present  relation  to 
one  another.  If  men  had  ever  been  found  in  society  without 
women,  or  women  without  men,  or  if  there  had  been  a  society 
of  men  and  women  in  which  the  women  were  not  under  the 
control  of  the  men,  something  might  have  been  positively  known 
about  the  mental  and  moral  differences  which  may  be  inher- 
ent in  the  nature  of  each.  What  is  now  called  the  nature  of' 
women  is  an  eminently  artificial  thing  —  the  result  of  forced 
repression  in  some  directions,  unnatural  stimulation  in  others. 
It  may  be  asserted  without  scruple,  that  no  other  class  of  depend- 
ents have  had  their  character  so  entirely  distorted  from  its 
natural  proportions  by  their  relation  with  their  masters;  for, 
if  conquered,  and  slave  races  have  been,  in  some  respects,  more 
forcibly  repressed,  whatever  in  them  has  not  been  crushed  down 
by  an  iron  heel  has  generally  been  let  alone,  and  if  left  with  any 
liberty  of  development,  it  has  developed  itself  according  to  its 
own  laws ;  but  in  the  case  of  women,  a  hothouse  and  stove 
cultivation  has  always  been  carried  on  of  some  of  the  capabilities 
of  their  nature,  for  the  benefit  and  pleasure  of  their  masters. 
Then,  because  certain  products  of  the  general  vital  force  sprout 
luxuriantly  and  reach  a  great  development  in  this  heated  atmos- 
l)here  and  under  this  active  nurture  and  watering,  while  other 


494  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

shoots  from  the  same  root,  which  are  left  outside  in  the  wintry 
air,  with  ice  purposely  heaped  all  round  them,  have  a  stunted 
growth,  and  some  are  burnt  off  with  fire  and  disappear;  men, 
with  that  inability  to  recognize  their  own  work  which  distin- 
guishes the  unanalytic  mind,  indolently  believe  that  the  tree 
grows  of  itself  in  the  way  they  have  made  it  grow,  and  that  it 
would  die  if  one  half  of  it  were  not  kept  in  a  vapor  bath  and  the 
other  half  in  the  snow. 

Of  all  difficulties  which  impede  the  progress  of  thought,  and 
the  formation  of  well-grounded  opinions  on  life  and  social  ar- 
rangements, the   greatest   is   now  the   unspeakable   ignorance 
and  inattention  of  mankind  in  respect  to  the  influences  which 
form  human  character.     Whatever  any  portion  of  the  human 
species  now  are,  or  seem  to  be,  such,  it  is  supposed,  they  have  a 
natural  tendency  to  be:  even  when  the  most  elementary  knowl- 
edge of  the  circumstances  in  which  they  have  been  placed  clearly 
points  out  the  causes  that  made  them  what  they  are.     Because 
a  cotter  deeply  in  arrears  to  his  landlord  is  not  industrious, 
there  are  people  who  think  that  the  Irish  are  naturally  idle. 
Because  constitutions  can  be  overthrown  when  the  authorities 
appointed  to  execute  them  turn  their  arms  against  them,  there 
are  people  who  think  the  French  incapable  of  free  government. 
Because  the  Greeks  cheated  the  Turks,  and  the  Turks  only 
plundered  the  Greeks,  there  are  persons  who  think  that  the 
Turks  are  naturally  more  sincere:    and  because  women,  as  is 
I  often  said,  care  nothing  about  politics  except  their  personalities, 
I  it  is  supposed  that  the  general  good  is  naturally  less  interesting 
to  women  than  to  men.     History,  which  is  now  so  much  better 
understood  than  formerly,  teaches  another  lesson:    if  only  by 
showing  the  extraordinary  susceptibiHty  of  human  nature  to 
external  influences,  and  the  extreme  variableness  of  those  of  its 
manifestations  which  are  supposed  to  be  most  universal  and 
uniform.     But  in  history,  as  in  traveling,  men  usually  see  only 
what  they  already  have  in  their  own  minds ;  and  few  learn  much 
from  history  who  do  not  bring  much  with  them  to  its  study. 
Hence,  in  regard  to  that  most  difficult  question,  what  are  the 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF  WOMEN  495 

natural  differences  between  the  two  sexes  —  a  subject  on  which 
it  is  impossible  in  the  present  state  of  society  to  obtain  complete 
\  and  correct  knowledge  —  while  almost  everybody  dogmatizes 
upon  it,  almost  all  neglect  and  make  light  of  the  only  means  by 
which  any  partial  insight  can  be  obtained  into  it.  This  is,  an 
analytic  study  of  the  most  important  department  of  psychology, 
the  laws  of  the  influence  of  circumstances  on  character.  For, 
however  great  and  apparently  ineradicable  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual differences  between  men  and  women  might  be,  the  evi- 
dence of  their  being  natural  differences  could  only  be  negative. 
I  Those  only  could  be  inferred  to  be  natural  which  could  not  pos- 
sibly be  artificial  —  the  residuum,  after  deducting  every  char- 
acteristic of  either  sex  which  can  admit  of  being  explained  from 
education  or  external  circumstances.  The  profoundest  knowl- 
edge of  the  laws  of  the  formation  of  character  is  indispensable 
to  entitle  any  one  to  affirm  even  that  there  is  any  difference, 
much  more  what  the  difference  is,  between  the  two  sesres  con- 
sidered as  moral  and  rational  beings ;  and  since  no  one,  as  yet, 
has  that  knowledge  (for  there  is  hardly  any  subject  which,  in 
proportion  to  its  importance,  has  been  so  little  studied),  no  one 
is  thus  far  entitled  to  any  positive  opinion  on  the  subject. 
Conjectures  are  all  that  can  at  present  be  made ;  conjectures 
more  or  less  probable,  according  as  more  or  less  authorized  by 
such  knowledge  as  we  yet  have  of  the  laws  of  psychology,  as 
applied  to  the  formation  of  character. 

Even  the  preliminary  knowledge,  what  the  differences  between 
the  sexes  now  are,  apart  from  all  question  as  to  how  they  are 
made  what  they  are,  is  still  in  the  crudest  and  most  incomplete 
state.  Medical  practitioners  and  physiologists  have  ascertained, 
to  some  extent,  the  differences  in  bodily  constitution  ;  and  this  is 
an  important  element  to  the  psychologist ;  but  hardly  any  medi- 
cal practitioner  is  a  psychologist.  Respecting  the  mental  char- 
acteristics of  women,  their  observations  are  of  no  more  worth 
than  those  of  common  men.  It  is  a  subject  on  which  nothing 
final  can  be  known,  so  long  as  those  who  alone  can  really  know  it, 
women  themselves,  have  given  but  little  testimony,  and  that 


496  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

little,  mostly  suborned.  It  is  easy  to  know  stupid  women. 
Stupidity  is  much  the  same  all  the  world  over.  A  stupid  person's 
notions  and  feelings  may  confidently  be  inferred  from  those  which 
prevail  in  the  circle  by  which  the  person  is  surrounded.  Not 
so  with  those  whose  opinions  and  feelings  are  an  emanation  from 
their  own  nature  and  faculties.  It  is  only  a  man  hce  and  there 
who  has  any  tolerable  knowledge  of  the  character  even  of  the  A 
women  of  his  own  family.  I  do  not  mean,  of  their  capabilities ;  y 
these  nobody  knows,  not  even  themselves,  because  most  of  them 
have  never  been  called  out.  I  mean  their  actually  existing  - 
thoughts  and  feelings.  Many  a  man  thinks  he  perfectly  under-^ 
stands  women,  because  he  has  had  amatory  relations  with  several, 
perhaps  with  many  of  them.  If  he  is  a  good  observer,  and  his 
experience  extends  to  quality  as  well  as  quantity,  he  may  have 
learned  something  of  one  narrow  department  of  their  nature  — 
an  important  department,  no  doubt.  But  of  all  the  rest  of  it, 
few  persons  are  generally  more  ignorant,  because  there  are  few 
from  whom  it  is  so  carefully  hidden.  The  most  favorable  case 
which  a  man  can  generally  have  for  studying  the  character  of 
a  woman,  is  that  of  his  own  wife ;  for  the  opportunities  are 
greater,  and  the  cases  of  complete  sympathy  not  so  unspeakably  ' 
rare.  And  in  fact,  this  is  the  source  from  which  any  knowledge 
worth  having  on  the  subject  has,  I  believe,  generally  come. 
But  most  men  have  not  had  the  opportunity  of  studying  in  this 
way  more  than  a  single  case ;  accordingly  one  can,  to  an  almost 
laughable  degree,  infer  what  a  man's  wife  is  like  from  his  opin- 
ions about  women  in  general.  To  make  even  this  one  case 
yield  any  result,  the  woman  must  be  worth  knowing,  and  the 
man  not  only  a  competent  judge,  but  of  a  character  so  sympa- 
thetic in  itself,  and  so  well  adapted  to  hers,  that  he  can  either 
read  her  mind  by  sympathetic  intuition,  or  has  nothing  in  him- 
self which  makes  her  shy  of  disclosing  it.  Hardly  anything,  I 
believe,  can  be  more  rare  than  this  conjunction.  It  often  hap- 
pens that  there  is  the  most  complete  unity  of  feeling  and  com- 
munity of  interests  as  to  all  external  things,  yet  the  one  has  as 
little  admission  into  the  internal  life  of  the  other  as  if  they  were^ 


THE   SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  497 

common  acquaintance.  Even  with  true  affection,  authority  on 
the  one  side  and  subordination  on  the  other  prevent  perfect 
confidence.  Though  nothing  may  be  intentionally  withheld, 
much  is  not  shown.  In  the  analogous  relation  of  parent  and 
child,  the  corresponding  phenomenon  must  have  been  in  the 
observation  of  every  one.  As  between  father  and  son,  how  many 
are  the  cases  in  which  the  father,  in  spite  of  real  affection  on 
both  sides,  obviously  to  all  the  world  does  not  know,  nor  suspect, 
parts  of  the  son's  character  familiar  to  his  companions  and  equals. 
The  truth  is,  that  the  position  of  looking  up  to  another  is  ex- 
tremely unpropitious  to  complete  sincerity  and  openness  with^ 
him.  The  fear  of  losing  ground  in  his  opinion  or  in  his  feelings 
is  so  strong,  that  even  in  an  upright  character,  there  is  an  uncon- 
scious tendency  to  show  only  the  best  side,  or  the  side  which, 
though  not  the  best,  is  that  which  he  most  likes  to  see ;  and  it 
may  be  confidently  said  that  thorough  knowledge  of  one  another 
hardly  ever  exists,  but  between  persons  who,  besides  being  inti- 
mates, are  equals.  How  much  more  true,  then,  must  all  this  be, 
when  the  one  is  not  only  under  the  authority  of  the  other,  but 
has  it  inculcated  on  her  as  a  duty  to  reckon  everything  else  subor- 
dinate to  his  comfort  and  pleasure,  and  to  let  him  neither  see  nor 
feel  anything  coming  from  her,  except  what  is  agreeable  to  him. 
All  these  difficulties  stand  in  the  way  of  a  man's  obtaining  any 
thorough  knowledge  even  of  the  one  woman  whom  alone,  in 
general,  he  has  sufficient  opportunity  of  studying.  When  we 
further  consider  that  to  understand  one  woman  is  not  necessarily 
to  understand  any  other  woman ;  that  even  if  he  could  study 
many  women  of  one  rank,  or  of  one  country,  he  would  not  thereby 
understand  women  of  other  ranks  or  countries ;  and  even  if  he 
did,  they  are  still  only  the  women  of  a  single  period  of  history ; 
we  may  safely  assert  that  the  knowledge  which  men  can  acquire 
of  women,  even  as  they  have  been  and  are,  without  reference  to 
what  they  might  be,  is  wretchedly  imperfect  and  superficial, 
and  always  will  be  so,  until  women  themselves  have  told  all 
that  they  have  to  tell. 

And  this  time  has  not  come ;  nor  will  it  come  otherwise  than 


498  JOHN  STUART  MILL 

gradually.  It  is  but  of  yesterday  that  women  have  either 
been  qualified  by  literary  accomplishments,  or  permitted  by 
society,  to  tell  anything  to  the  general  public.  As  yet  very  few 
of  them  dare  tell  anything  which  men,  on  whom  their  literary 
success  depends,  are  unwilling  to  hear.  Let  us  remember  in 
what  manner,  up  to  a  very  recent  time,  the  expression,  even  by 
a  male  author,  of  uncustomary  opinions,  or  what  are  deemed 
eccentric  feelings,  usually  was,  and  in  some  degree  still  is,  re- 
ceived ;  and  we  may  form  some  faint  conception  under  what 
impediments  a  woman,  who  is  brought  up  to  think  custom  and 
opinion  her  sovereign  rule,  attempts  to  express  in  books  any- 
thing drawn  from  the  depths  of  her  own  nature.  The  greatest 
woman  who  has  left  writings  behind  her  sufficient  to  give  her 
an  eminent  rank  in  the  literature  of  her  country,  thought  it 
necessary  to  prefix  as  a  motto  to  her  boldest  work,  "  Un  homme 
pent  braver  ropinion;    une  femme  doit  s^y  soumettre."  ^     The 

j  greater  part  of  what  women  write  about  women  is  mere  syco- 
phancy to  men.  In  the  case  of  unmarried  women,  much  of  it 
seems  only  intended  to  increase  their  chance  of  a  husband. 
Many,  both  married  and  unmarried,  overstep  the  mark,  and 
inculcate  a  servility  beyond  what  is  desired  or  relished  by  any 
man,  except  the  very  vulgarest.  But  this  is  not  so  often  the 
case  as,  even  at  a  quite  late  period,  it  still  was.     Literary  women 

'  are  becoming  more  free-spoken,  and  more  willing  to  express  their 
real  sentiments.  Unfortunately,  in  this  country  especially,  they 
are  themselves  such  artificial  products  that  their  sentiments 
are  compounded  of  a  small  element  of  individual  observation 
and  consciousness,  and  a  very  large  one  of  acquired  associations. 
This  will  be  less  and  less  the  case,  but  it  will  remain  true  to  a 
great  extent,  as  long  as  social  institutions  do  not  admit  the  same 
free  development  of  originality  in  women  which  is  possible  tq_ 
men.  When  that  time  comes,  and  not  before,  we  shall  see,  and 
not  merely  hear,  as  much  as  it  is  necessary  to  know  of  the  nature 
of  women,  and  the  adaptation  of  other  things  to  it. 

^A  man  may  defy  opinion;    a  woman  must  submit  to  it. — Editors. 
Title-page  of  Mme.  de  Stael's  Delphine. 


THE   SUBJECTION  OF  WOMEN  499 

I  have  dwelt  so  much  on  the  difficulties  which  at  present 
obstruct  any  real  knowledge  by  men  of  the  true  nature  of  women, 
because  in  this  as  in  so  many  other  things  "opinio  copice  inter 
maximas  causas  inopicB  est;  "  ^  and  there  is  little  chance  of  reason- 
able thinking  on  the  matter,  while  people  flatter  themselves 
that  they  perfectly  understand  a  subject  of  which  most  men 
know  absolutely  nothing,  and  of  which  it  is  at  present  impossible 
that  any  man,  or  all  men  taken  together,  should  have  knowledge 
which  can  qualify  them  to  lay  down  the  law  to  women  as  to  what 
is,  or  is  not,  their  vocation.  Happily,  no  such  knowledge  is  nec- 
essaiy  for  any  practical  purpose  connected  with  the  position  of 
women  in  relation  to  society  and  life.  For,  according  to  all  the 
principles  involved  in  modern  society,  the  question  rests  with 
women  themselves  —  to  be  decided  by  their  own  experience, 
and  by  the  use  of  their  own  faculties.  There  are  no  means  of 
finding  what  either  one  person  or  many  can  do,  but  by  trying 
—  and  no  means  by  which  any  one  else  can  discover  for  them 
what  it  is  for  their  happiness  to  do  or  leave  undone. 

One  thing  we  may  be  certain  of  —  that  what  is  contrary  to 
women's  nature  to  do,  they  never  will  be  made  to  do  by  simply 
giving  their  nature  free  play.  The  anxiety  of  mankind  to  inter- 
fere in  behalf  of  nature,  for  fear  lest  nature  should  not  succeed 
in  effecting  its  purpose,  is  an  altogether  unnecessary  solicitude. 
What  women  by  nature  cannot  do,  it  is  quite  superfluous  to 
forbid  them  from  doing.  What  they  can  do,  but  not  so  well  as 
the  men  who  are  their  competitors,  competition  suffices  to  ex- 
clude them  from;  since  nobody  asks  for  protective  duties  and 
bounties  in  favor  of  women ;  it  is  only  asked  that  the  present 
bounties  and  protective  duties  in  favor  of  men  should  be  recalled. 
If  women  have  a  greater  natural  inclination  for  some  things  than 
for  others,  there  is  no  need  of  laws  or  social  inculcation  to  make 
the  majority  of  them  do  the  former  in  preference  to  the  latter. 
Whatever  women's  services  are  most  wanted  for,  the  free  play 
of  competition  will  hold  out  the  strongest  inducements  to  them 
to  undertake.     And,  as  the  words  imply,  they  are  most  wanted 

1  Supposed  abundance  is  among  the  chief  causes  of  want.  — ■  Editors. 


500  JOHN   STUART  MILL 

Lfor  the  things  for  which  they  are  most  fit ;  by  the  apportionment 
of  which  to  them,  the  collective  faculties  of  the  two  sexes  can  be 
applied  on  the  whole  with  the  greatest  sum  of  valuable  result. 

The  general  opinion  of  men  is  supposed  to  be,  that  the  natural 
vocation  of  a  woman  is  that  of  a  wife  and  mother.  I  say,  is 
supposed  to  be,  because,  judging  from  acts  —  from  the  whole 
of  the  present  constitution  of  society  —  one  might  infer  that 
their  opinion  was  the  direct  contrary.  They  might  be  supposed 
to  think  that  the  alleged  natural  vocation  of  women  was  of  all 
things  the  most  repugnant  to  their  nature ;  insomuch  that  if 
they  are  free  to  do  anything  else  —  if  any  other  means  of  living, 
or  occupation  of  their  time  and  faculties,  is  open,  which  has 
any  chance  of  appearing  desirable  to  them  —  there  will  not  be 
enough  of  them  who  will  be  willing  to  accept  the  condition  said 
to  be  natural  to  them.  If  this  is  the  real  opinion  of  men  in 
general,  it  would  be  well  that  it  should  be  spoken  out.  I  should 
like  to  hear  somebody  openly  enunciating  the  doctrine  (it  is 
already  implied  in  much  that  is  written  on  the  subject)  —  "It 
is  necessary  to  society  that  women  should  marry  and  produce 
children.  They  will  not  do  so  unless  they  are  compelled. 
Therefore  it  is  necessary  to  compel  them."  The  merits  of  the 
case  would  then  be  clearly  defined.  It  would  be  exactly  that 
of  the  slaveholders  of  South  Carolina  and  Louisiana.  "It  is 
necessary  that  cotton  and  sugar  should  be  grown.  White  men 
cannot  produce  them.  Negroes  will  not,  for  any  wages  which 
we  choose  to  give.  Ergo  they  must  be  compelled."  An  illus- 
tration still  closer  to  the  point  is  that  of  impressment.  Sailors 
must  absolutely  be  had  to  defend  the  country.  It  often  happens 
that  they  will  not  voluntarily  enlist.  Therefore  there  must  be 
the  power  of  forcing  them.  How  often  has  this  logic  been  used  ! 
and,  but  for  one  flaw  in  it,  without  doubt  it  would  have  been 
successful  up  to  this  day.  But  it  is  open  to  the  retort  —  First 
pay  the  sailors  the  honest  value  of  their  labor.  When  you  have 
made  it  as  well  worth  their  while  to  serve  you,  as  to  work  for 
other  employers,  you  will  have  no  more  difficulty  than  others 
have  in  obtaining  their  services.     To  this  there  is  no  logical 


THE   SUBJECTION   OF   WOMEN  501 

answer  except  "I  will  not:"  and  as  people  are  now  not  only 
ashamed,  but  are  not  desirous,  to  rob  the  laborer  of  his  hire, 
impressment  is  no  longer  advocated.     Those  who  attempt  to 
force  women  into  marriage  by  closing  all  other  doors  against 
them,  lay  themselves  open  to  a  similar  retort.     If  they  mean 
what  they  say,  their  opinion  must  evidently  be,  that  men  dcT 
not  render  the  married  condition  so  desirable  to  women  as  to 
induce  them  to  accept  it  for  its  own  recommendations.     It  is 
not  a  sign  of  one's  thinking  the  boon  one  offers  very  attractive 
when  one  allows  only  Hobson's  choice,  "that  or  none."     And 
here,  I  believe,  is  the  clew  to  the  feelings  of  those  men  who  have 
a  real  antipathy  to  the  equal  freedom  of  women.     I  believe  they 
are  afraid,  not  lest  women  should  be  unwilling  to  marry,  for  I 
do  not  think  that  any  one  in  reality  has  that  apprehension ;  but 
lest  they  should  insist  that  marriage  should  be  on  equal  condi- 
tions ;  lest  all  women  of  spirit  and  capacity  should  prefer  doing 
almost  anything  else,  not  in  their  own  eyes  degrading,  rather 
than  marry,  when  marrying  is  giving  themselves  a  master,  and 
_a  master  too  of  all  their  earthly  possessions.     And  truly,  if  this 
consequence   were   necessarily   incident  to    marriage,   I    think 
that  the  apprehension  would  be  very  well  founded.     I  agree  in 
thinking  it  probable  that  few  women,  capable  of  anything  else, 
would,  unless  under  an  irresistible  entrainement,^  rendering  them 
for  the  time  insensible  to  anything  but  itself,  choose  such  a  lot, 
when  any  other  means  were  open  to  them  of  filling  a  convention- 
ally honorable  place  in  life  :  and  if  men  are  determined  that  the 
law  of  marriage  shall  be  a  law  of  despotism,  they  are  quite  right, 
in  point  of  mere  policy,  in  leaving  to  women  only  Hobson's 
choice.     But,  in  that  case,  all  that  has  been  done  in  the  modern 
world  to  relax  the  chain  on  the  minds  of  women,  has  been  a  mis- 
take.   They  never  should  have  been  allowed  to  receive  a  literary 
education.     Women  who  read,  much  more  women  who  write,  are, 
in  the  existing  constitution  of  things,  a  contradiction  and  a  dis- 
turbing element :  and  it  was  wrong  to  bring  women  up  with  any 
acquirements  but  those  of  an  odalisque,  or  of  a  domestic  servant. 

1  Impulse.  — ■  Editors. 


XVIII 

THE   FUTURE   OF  WOMAN  i 

Frederic  Harrison 

[Frederic  Harrison  (1831-)  is  one  of  the  last  survivors  of  a  notable 
generation  of  critics  and  men  of  letters  of  the  late  nineteenth  century. 
Throughout  his  long  life  Mr.  Harrison  has  written  much  on  general  litera- 
ture, history,  biography,  philosophy,  religion,  education,  and  political  and 
economic  science.  He  has  also  been  prominent  as  a  jurist,  and  has  taken 
an  active  part  in  the  political  and  social  affairs  of  England,  where  he  has 
done  much  for  the  practical  advancement  of  progressive  opinions. 

Mr.  Harrison's  political  views,  however,  do  not  extend  to  the  support  of 
woman  suffrage,  although  he  regards  the  question  as  a  very  burning  one, 
and  the  continued  agitation  over  it  "charged  with  tremendous  consequences, 
political,  social,  and  moral."  His  opinions  on  the  subject  of  the  rights, 
duties,  and  claims  of  women  are  contained  in  four  essays,  printed  in  his 
volume  Realities  and  Ideals  (1908).  The  introductory  essay  of  this  group 
has  been  chosen  as  an  able  presentation  of  some  of  the  fundamental  argu- 
ments often  urged  by  opponents  of  woman  suffrage.  Mr.  Harrison  makes 
no  apology  for  male  tyranny  now  or  in  the  past  and  admits  that  many  legal 
and  social  changes  are  needed  for  woman's  best  development ;  but  he  argues 
that  to  break  down  the  barriers  that  tend  to  distinguish  the  life  of  woman 
from  that  of  man  would  be  to  shake  the  foundations  of  all  family  Hfe  and 
bring  disaster  to  civilization.  An  earlier  statement  of  these  opinions,  and 
especially  interesting  here,  is  Mr.  Harrison's  analysis  and  refutation  of  the 
claims  of  Mill's  Subjection  of  Women  in  his  volume  Tennyson,  Ruskin,  Mill, 
and  other  Literary  Estimates  (1900),  pp.  289-297.] 

The  system  of  thought  on  which  this  entire  series  of  essays 
is  based  seeks^  to  morahze  and  to  spirituahze  the  great  insti- 
tutions of  society  —  not  to  revolutionize  or  to  materiaHze  them. 
In  nothing  is  this  character  more  conspicuous  than  in  its  teach- 

^  Reprinted  by  permission  of  The  Macmillan  Company,  from  Realities  and 
Ideals,  by  Frederic  Harrison. 

502 


THE   FUTURE   OF   WOMAN  503 

ing  as  to  the  social  Future  of  Woman.  It  is  intensely  conserva- 
tive as  to  the  distinctive  quality  with  which  civilization  has 
ever  invested  women,  whilst  it  is  ardently  progressive  in  its 
aim  to  purify  and  spiritualize  the  social  function  of  women.  It 
holds  firmly  the  middle  ground  between  the  base  apathy  which 
is  satisfied  with  the  actual  condition  of  woman  as  it  is,  and  the 
restless  materialism  which  would  assimilate,  as  far  as  possible, 
the  distinctive  functions  of  women  to  those  of  men,  which  would 
"equalize  the  sexes"  in  the  spirit  of  justice,  as  they  phrase  it, 
and  would  pulverize  the  social  groups  of  families,  sexes,  and 
professions  into  individuals  organized,  if  at  all,  by  unlimited 
resort  to  the  ballot  box.  Herein  we  are  truly  conservative  in 
holding  society  to  be  made  up  of  families,  not  of  individuals, 
and  in  developing,  not  in  annihilating,  the  differences  of  sex, 
age,  and  relation  between  individuals. 

But  first,  let  us  get  rid  of  the  unworthy  suspicion  that  we  are 
content  with  the  condition  of  women  as  we  see  it,  6ven  in  the 
advanced  populations  of  the  West  to-day.  As  M.  Lafl6tte  has 
so  well  put  it,  the  "test  of  civilization  is  the  place  which  it  as- 
signs to  women."  In  a  rudimentary  state  we  find  women  treated 
with  brutal  oppression,  little  better  than  slaves  or  beasts  of 
burden,  where  the  conditions  of  existence  make  such  tasks  al- 
most a  cruel  necessity  for  all.  In  many  societies  of  a  high  civili- 
zation, from  the  point  of  view  of  intellectual  activity  or  military 
organization,  the  condition  of  women  is  often  found  to  be  one 
of  seclusion,  neglect,  or  humiliation,  moral,  physical,  and  intel- 
lectual. Even  to-day,  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  — • 
conditions,  perhaps,  more  often  found  in  some  sections  of  the 
laboring  classes  of  cities  rather  than  amongst  the  spoiled  daugh- 
ters of  wealth  and  power  —  it  is  shocking  to  see  how  backward 
is  the  education  of  women  as  a  sex,  how  much  their  lives  are 
overburdened  by  labor,  anxiety,  and  unwomanly  fatigues,  by 
frivolous  excitement  and  undue  domestic  responsibility,  by  the 
fever  of  public  ambitions  and  cynical  defiance  of  all  womanly 
ideals. 

No !  we  can  never  rest  satisfied  with  the  current  prejudice 


504  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

that  assigns  to  woman,  even  to  those  with  ample  leisure  and 
resources,  an  education  different  in  kind  and  degree  and  avow- 
edly inferior  to  that  of  men,  which  supposes  that  even  a  superior 
education  for  girls  should  be  limited  to  moderate  knowledge 
of  a  few  modern  languages,  and  a  few  elegant  accomplishments. 
This  truly  Mohammedan  or  Hindu  view  of  woman's  education 
is  no  longer  openly  avowed  by  cultured  people  of  our  own  gen- 
eration. But  it  is  too  obviously  still  the  practice  in  fact  through- 
out the  whole  Western  world,  even  for  nine  tenths  of  the  rich. 
And  as  to  the  education  which  is  officially  provided  for  the  poor, 
it  is  in  this  country,  at  least,  almost  too  slight  to  deserve  the 
name  at  all.  For  this  most  dreadful  neglect  let  us  call  aloud 
for  radical  relief.  We  call  aloud  for  an  education  for  women  in 
the  same  line  as  that  of  men,  to  be  given  by  the  same  teachers, 
and  covering  the  same  ground,  though  not  at  all  necessarily  to 
be  worked  out  in  common  or  in  the  same  form  and  with  the 
same  practical  detail.  It  must  be  an  education,  essentially  in 
scientific  basis  the  same  as  that  of  men,  conducted  by  the  same, 
and  those  the  best  attainable,  instructors  —  an  education  cer- 
tainly not  inferior,  rather  superior  to  that  of  men,  inasmuch  as 
it  can  easily  be  freed  from  the  drudgery  incidental  to  the  prac- 
tice of  special  trades,  and  also  because  it  is  adapted  to  the  more 
sympathetic,  more  alert,  more  tractable,  more  imaginative  in- 
telligence of  women. 

So,  also,  we  look  to  the  good  feeling  of  the  future  to  relieve 
women  from  the  agonizing  wear  and  tear  of  families  far  too 
large  to  be  reared  by  one  mother  —  a  burden  which  crushes 
down  the  best  years  of  life  for  so  many  mothers,  sisters,  and 
daughters  —  a  burden  which,  whilst  it  exists,  makes  all  expec- 
tation of  superior  education  or  greater  moral  elevation  in  the 
masses  of  women  mere  idle  talk  —  a  burden  which  would  never 
be  borne  at  all,  were  it  not  that  the  cry  of  the  market  for  more 
child  labor  produces  an  artificial  bounty  on  excessively  large 
families.  And  to  the  future  we  look  to  set  women  free  from 
the  crushing  factory  labor  which  is  the  real  slave  trade  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  one  of  the  most  retrograde  changes  in  social 


THE  FUTURE  OF  WOMAN  505 

order  ever  made  since  Feudalism  and  Church  together  extin- 
guished the  slavery  of  the  ancient  world.  In  many  ways  this 
slavery  of  modern  Industrialism  is  quite  as  demoralizing  to  men 
and  women,  and  in  some  ways  as  injurious  to  society,  as  ever 
was  the  mitigated  slavery  of  the  Roman  Empire,  though  its 
evils  are  not  quite  so  startling  and  so  cruel. 

These  are  the  wants  which,  in  our  eyes,  press  with  greatest 
urgency  on  the  conditions  of  women,  and  not  their  admission 
to  all  the  severe  labors  and  engrossing  professions  of  men,  the 
assimilation  of  the  life  of  women  to  the  life  of  men,  and  espe- 
cially to  a  share  in  all  public  duties  and  privileges.  The  root 
of  the  matter  is  that  the  social  function  of  women  is  essentially 
and  increasingly  different  from  that  of  men.  What  is  this 
function  ?  It  is  personal,  direct,  domestic ;  working  rather 
through  sympathy  than  through  action,  equally  intellectual 
as  that  of  men,  but  acting  more  through  the  imagination,  and 
less  through  logic.  We  start  from  this  —  neither  exaggerating 
the  difference,  nor  denying  it,  but  resting  in  the  organic  differ- 
ence between  woman  and  man.  It  is  proved  by  all  sound 
biology,  by  the  biology  both  of  man  and  of  the  entire  animal 
series.  It  is  proved  also  by  the  history  of  civilization,  and  the 
entire  course  of  human  evolution.  It  is  brought  home  to  us 
every  hour  of  the  day,  by  the  instinctive  practice  of  every 
family.  And  it  is  illustrated  and  idealized  by  the  noblest 
poetry  of  the  world,  whether  it  be  the  great  epics  of  the  past  or 
the  sum  of  modern  romance. 

It  is  a  difference  of  nature,  I  say,  an  organic  difference,  alike 
in  body,  in  mind,  in  feeling,  and  in  character  —  a  difference 
which  it  is  the  part  of  evolution  to  develop  and  not  to  destroy, 
as  it  is  always  the  part  of  evolution  to  develop  organic  differ- 
ences and  not  to  produce  their  artificial  assimilation.  A  dif- 
ference, as  I  have  said ;  but  not  a  scale  of  superiority  or  inferior- 
ity. No  theory  more  than  ours  repudiates  the  brutal  egoism 
of  past  ages,  and  of  too  many  present  men  of  the  world,  which 
classes  women  as  the  inferiors  of  men,  and  the  cheap  sophistry 
of  the  vicious  and  the  overbearing  that  the  part  of  women  in 


5o6  FREDERIC   HARRISON 

the  life  of  humanity  is  a  lower,  a  less  intellectual,  or  less  active 
part.  Such  a  view  is  the  refuge  of  coarse  natures  and  stunted 
brains.  Who  can  say  whether  it  is  nobler  to  be  husband  or  to 
be  wife,  to  be  mother  or  to  be  son  ?  Is  it  more  blessed  to  love 
or  to  be  loved,  to  form  a  character  or  to  write  a  poem  ?  Enough 
of  these  idle  conundrums,  which  are  as  cynical  as  they  are  sense- 
less. Everything  depends  on  how  the  part  is  played,  how  near 
each  one  of  us  comes  to  the  higher  ideal  —  how  our  life  is  worked 
out,  not  whether  we  be  born  man  or  woman,  in  the  first  half  of 
the  century  or  in  the  second.  The  thing  which  concerns  us  is 
to  hold  fast  by  the  organic  difference  implanted  by  Nature  be- 
tween Man  and  Woman,  in  body,  in  mind,  in  feeling,  and  in 
energy,  without  any  balancing  of  higher  and  lower,  of  better  or 
of  worse. 

Fully  to  work  out  the  whole  meaning  of  this  difference  in  all  its 
details,  would  involve  a  complete  analysis  in  Anthropology  and 
Ethics,  and  nothing  but  the  bare  heads  of  the  subject  can  here  be 
noticed.  It  begins  with  the  difference  in  physical  organization  — • 
the  condition,  and,  no  doubt  in  one  sense,  the  antecedent  (I  do 
not  say  the  cause)  of  every  other  difference.  The  physical  organ- 
ization of  women  differs  from  that  of  men  in  many  ways :  it  is 
more  rapidly  matured,  and  yet,  possibly,  more  viable  (as  the 
French  say),  more  likely  to  live,  and  to  live  longer;  it  is  more 
delicate,  in  all  senses  of  the  word,  more  sympathetic,  more  elastic, 
more  liable  to  shock  and  to  change ;  it  is  obviously  less  in  weight, 
in  mass,  in  physical  force,  but  above  all  in  muscular  persistence. 
It  is  not  true  to  say  that  the  feminine  organization  is,  on  the 
whole,  weaker,  because  there  are  certain  forms  of  fatigue,  such  as 
those  of  nursing  the  sick  or  the  infant,  minute  care  of  domestic 
details,  ability  to  resist  the  wear  and  tear  of  anxiety  on  the  body, 
in  which  women  certainly  at  present  surpass  men. 

But  there  is  one  feature  in  the  feminine  organization  which, 
for  industrial  and  political  purposes,  is  more  important  than 
all.  It  is  subject  to  functional  interruption  absolutely  incom- 
patible with  the  highest  forms  of  continuous  pressure.  With 
mothers,  this  interruption  amounts   to   seasons    of   prostration 


THE   FUTURE  OF  WOMAN  507 

during  many  of  the  best  years  of  life;  with  all  women  (but  a 
small  exception  not  worth  considering)  it  involves  some  inter- 
ruption to  the  maximum  working  capacity.  A  perfectly  healthy 
man  works  from  childhood  to  old  age,  marries  and  brings  up  a 
family  of  children,  without  knowing  one  hour  of  any  one  day 
when  he  was  not  "quite  fit."  No  woman  could  say  the  same; 
and  of  course  no  mother  could  deny  that  for  months  she  had 
been  a  simple  invalid.  Now,  for  all  the  really  severe  strains  of 
industrial,  professional,  and  public  careers,  the  first  condition 
of  success  is  the  power  to  endure  long  continuous  pressure  at 
the  highest  point,  without  the  risk  of  sudden  collapse,  even  for 
an  hour. 

Supposing  all  other  forces  equal,  it  is  just  the  five  per  cent  of 
periodical  unfitness  which  makes  the  whole  difference  between 
the  working  capacity  of  the  sexes.  Imagine  an  army  in  the 
field  or  a  fleet  at  sea,  composed  of  women.  In  the  course  of 
nature,  on  the  day  of  battle  or  in  storm,  a  percentage  of  every 
regiment  and  of  every  crew  would  be  in  childbed,  and  a  much 
larger  percentage  would  be,  if  not  in  hospital,  below  the  mark 
or  liable  to  contract  severe  disease  if  subject  to  the  strain  of 
battle  or  storm.  Of  course  it  will  be  said  that  civil  life  is  not 
war,  and  that  mothers  are  not  intended  to  take  part.  But  all 
women  may  become  mothers ;  and  though  industry,  the  profes- 
sions, and  politics  are  not  war,  they  call  forth  qualities  of  en- 
durance, readiness,  and  indomitable  vigor  quite  as  truly  as 
war. 

Either  the  theory  of  opening  all  occupations  to  women  means 
opening  them  to  an  unsexed  minority  of  women,  or  it  means  a 
diminution  and  speedy  end  to  the  human  race,  or  it  means  that 
the  severer  occupations  are  to  be  carried  on  in  a  fashion  far 
more  desultory  and  amateurish  than  ever  has  yet  been  known. 
It  is  owing  to  a  very  natural  shrinking  from  hard  facts,  and  a 
somewhat  misplaced  conventionality,  that  this  fundamental 
point  has  been  kept  out  of  sight,  whilst  androgynous  ignorance 
has  gone  about  claiming  for  women  a  life  of  toil,  pain,  and 
danger,  for  which  every  husband,  every  biologist,  every  physi- 


5o8  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

cian,  every  mother  —  every  true  woman  —  knows  that  women 
are,  by  the  law  of  nature,  unfit. 

This  is,  as  I  said,  merely  a  preliminary  part  of  the  question. 
It  is  decisive  and  fundamental,  no  doubt,  and  it  lies  at  the  root 
of  the  matter.  It  is  a  plain  organic  fact,  that  ought  to  be 
treated  frankly,  and  which  I  have  touched  on  as  an  incident 
only  but  with  entire  directness.  But  I  feel  it  to  be,  after  all,  a 
material,  and  not  an  intellectual  or  spiritual  ground,  and  to 
belong  to  the  lower  aspects  of  the  question.  We  must  notice 
it,  for  it  cannot  be  disregarded  ;  but  it  is  by  no  means  the  heart 
of  the  matter.  The  heart  of  the  matter  is  the  greater  power  of 
affection  in  Woman,  or,  it  is  better  to  say,  the  greater  degree 
in  which  the  nature  of  Woman  is  stimulated  and  controlled  by 
affection.  It  is  a  stigma  on  our  generation  that  so  obvious  a 
commonplace  should  need  one  word  to  support  it.  Happily 
there  is  one  trait  in  humanity  which  the  most  cynical  sophistry 
has  hardly  ventured  to  belittle  —  the  devotion  of  the  mother  to 
her  offspring. 

This  is  the  universal  and  paramount  aspect  of  the  matter. 
For  the  life  of  every  man  and  woman  now  alive,  or  that  ever 
lived,  has  depended  on  the  mother's  love,  or  that  of  some 
woman  who  played  a  mother's  part.  It  is  a  fact  so  transcendent 
that  we  are  wont  to  call  it  an  animal  instinct.  It  is,  however, 
the  central  and  most  perfect  form  of  human  feeling.  It  is 
possessed  by  all  women :  it  is  the  dominant  instinct  of  all 
women ;  it  possesses  women,  whether  mothers  or  not,  from  the 
cradle  to  the  grave.  The  most  degraded  woman  is  in  this 
superior  to  the  most  heroic  man  (abnormal  cases  apart).  It  is 
the  earliest,  most  organic,  most  universal  of  all  the  innate  forces 
of  mankind.  And  it  still  remains  the  supreme  glory  of  Hu- 
manity. In  this  central  feature  of  human  nature.  Women  are 
always  and  everywhere  incontestably  preeminent.  And  round 
this  central  figure  of  human  nature,  all  human  civilization  is, 
and  ought  to  be  organized ;  and  to  perfecting  it  all  human  in- 
stitutions do  and  ought  to  converge. 

I  am  very  far  from  limiting  this  glorious  part  of  maternity 


THE   FUTURE   OF  WOMAN  509 

in  woman  to  the  breeding  and  nurture  of  infants;  nor  do  I 
mean  to  concentrate  civilization  on  the  propagation  of  the  hu- 
man species.  I  have  taken  the  mother's  care  for  the  infant  as 
the  most  conspicuous  and  fundamental  part  of  the  whole.  But 
this  is  simply  a  type  of  the  affection  which  in  all  its  forms 
woman  is  perpetually  offering  to  man  and  to  woman  —  to  the 
weak,  the  suffering,  the  careworn,  the  vicious,  the  dull,  and 
the  overburdened,  as  mother,  as  wife,  as  sister,  as  daughter, 
as  friend,  as  nurse,  as  teacher,  as  servant,  as  counselor,  as 
purifier,  as  example,  in  a  word  —  as  woman.  The  true  func- 
tion of  woman  is  to  educate,  not  children  only,  but  men,  to 
train  to  a  higher  civilization,  not  the  rising  generation,  but  the 
actual  society.  And  to  do  this  by  diffusing  the  spirit  of  affec- 
tion, of  self-restraint,  self-sacrifice,  fidelity,  and  purity.  And 
this  is  to  be  effected,  not  by  writing  books  about  these  things 
in  the  closet,  nor  by  preaching  sermons  about  them  in  the  con- 
gregation, but  by  manifesting  them  hour  by  hour  in  each  home 
by  the  magic  of  the  voice,  look,  word,  and  all  the  incommuni- 
cable graces  of  woman's  tenderness. 

All  this  has  become  so  completely  a  commonplace  that  the 
very  repeating  it  sounds  almost  like  a  jest.  But  it  has  to  be 
repeated  now  that  coarse  sophistry  has  begun,  not  only  to  for- 
get it,  but  to  deny  it.  And  we  will  repeat  it ;  for  we  have 
nothing  to  add  to  all  that  has  been  said  on  this  cardinal  fact 
of  human  nature  by  poets,  from  Homer  to  Tennyson,  by  mor- 
alists and  preachers,  by  common  sense  and  pure  minds,  since 
the  world  began.  We  have  nothing  to  add  to  it  save  this  — 
which,  perhaps,  is  really  important  —  that  this  function  of 
woman,  the  purifying,  spiritualizing,  humanizing  of  society,  by 
humanizing  each  family  and  by  influencing  every  husband, 
father,  son,  or  brother,  in  daily  contact  and  in  unspoken  lan- 
guage, is  itself  the  highest  of  all  human  functions,  and  is  nobler 
than  anything  which  art,  philosophy,  genius,  or  statesman- 
ship can  produce. 

The  spontaneous  and  inexhaustible  fountain  of  love,  the 
secret  springs  whereof  are  the  mystery  of  womanhood,  this  is 


5IO  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

indeed  the  grand  and  central  difiference  between  the  sexes. 
But  the  difference  of  function  is  quite  as  real,  if  less  in  degree, 
when  we  regard  the  intellect  and  the  character.  Plainly,  the 
intellect  of  women  on  the  whole  is  more  early  mature,  more 
rapid,  more  delicate,  more  agile  than  that  of  men ;  more  im- 
aginative, more  in  touch  with  emotion,  more  sensitive,  more 
individual,  more  teachable,  whilst  it  is  less  capable  of  prolonged 
tension,  of  intense  abstraction,  of  wide  range,  and  of  extraordi- 
nary compHcation.  It  may  be  that  this  is  resolvable  into  the 
obvious  fact  of  smaller  cerebral  masses  and  less  nervous  energy, 
rather  than  any  inferiority  of  quality. 

The  fact  remains  that  no  woman  has  ever  approached  Aris- 
totle and  Archimedes,  Shakespeare  and  Descartes,  Raphael  and 
Mozart,  or  has  ever  shown  even  a  kindred  sum  of  powers.  On 
the  other  hand,  not  one  man  in  ten  can  compare  with  average 
woman  in  tact,  subtlety  of  observation,  in  refinement  of  mental 
habit,  in  rapidity,  agility,  and  sympathetic  touch.  To  ask 
whether  the  occasional  outbursts  of  supreme  genius  in  the  male 
sex  are  higher  than  the  almost  universal  quickness  and  fineness 
of  mind  in  the  female  sex,  is  to  ask  an  idle  question.  To  expel 
either  out  of  human  nature  would  be  to  arrest  civilization  and 
to  plunge  us  into  barbarism.  And  the  eariiest  steps  out  of 
barbarism  would  have  to  begin  again  in  each  wigwam  with  the 
quick  observation  and  the  flexible  mind,  and  not  with  the  pro- 
found genius. 

As  with  the  intellect  —  so  with  the  powers  of  action.  The 
character  or  energy  of  women  is  very  different  from  that  of  men  ; 
though  here  again  it  is  impossible  to  say  which  is  the  superior, 
and  far  less  easy  to  make  the  contrast.  Certainly  the  world 
has  never  seen  a  female  Alexander,  Julius  Caesar,  Charlemagne, 
or  Cromwell.  And  in  mass,  endurance,  intensity,  variety,  and 
majesty  of  will  no  women  ever  approach  the  greatest  men,  and 
no  doubt  from  the  same  reason,  smaller  cerebral  mass  and  slighter 
nervous  organization.  Yet  in  qualities  of  constant  movement, 
in  perseverance,  in  passive  endurance,  in  rapidity  of  change,  in 
keenness  of  pursuit  (up  to  a  certain  range  and  within  a  given 


THE  FUTURE  OF  WOMAN  511 

time),  in  adaptability,  agility,  and  elasticity  of  nature,  in  in- 
dustriousness,  in  love  of  creating  rather  than  destroying,  of 
being  busy  rather  than  idle,  of  dealing  with  the  minutest  sur- 
roundings of  comfort,  grace,  and  convenience,  it  is  a  common- 
place to  acknowledge  women  to  be  our  superiors.  And  if  a 
million  housewives  do  not  equal  one  Caesar,  they  no  doubt  add 
more  to  the  happiness  of  their  own  generation. 

We  come  back  to  this  —  that  in  body,  in  mind,  in  feeling, 
in  character,  women  are  by  nature  designed  to  play  a  different 
part  from  men.  And  all  these  differences  combine  to  point 
to  a  part  personal  not  general,  domestic  not  public,  working 
by  direct  contact,  not  by  remote  suggestion,  through  the  imag- 
ination more  than  through  the  reason,  by  the  heart  more  than 
by  the  head.  There  is  in  women  a  like  inteUigence,  activity, 
passion ;  like  and  codrdinate,  but  not  identical ;  equally  valu- 
able, but  not  equal  by  measure ;  and  this  all  works  best  in  the 
Home.  That  is  to  say,  the  sphere  in  which  women  act  at  their 
highest  is  the  Family,  and  the  side  where  they  are  the  strongest 
is  Affection.  The  sphere  where  men  act  at  their  highest  is  in 
pubhc,  in  industry,  in  the  service  to  the  State ;  and  the  side 
where  men  are  at  their  strongest  is  Activity.  Intelligence  is 
common  to  both,  capable  in  men  of  more  sustained  strain,  apt 
in  women  for  more  delicate  and  mobile  service.  That  is  to 
say,  the  normal  and  natural  work  of  women  is  by  personal  influ- 
ence within  the  Home. 

All  this  is  so  obvious,  it  has  been  so  completely  the  universal 
and  instinctive  practice  of  mankind  since  civilization  began, 
that  to  repeat  it  would  be  wearisome  if  the  modern  spirit  of 
social  anarchy  were  not  eager  to  throw  it  all  aside.  And  we 
have  only  to  repeat  the  old  saws  on  the  matter,  together  with 
this  —  that  such  a  part  is  the  noblest  which  civilization  can  con- 
fer, and  was  never  more  urgently  needed  than  it  is  to-day.  In 
accepting  it  graciously  and  in  filling  it  worthily,  women  are 
placing  themselves  as  a  true  spiritual  force  in  the  vanguard  of 
human  evolution,  and  are  performing  the  holiest  and  most 
beautiful  of  all  duties  which  Humanity  has  reserved  for  her 


512  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

best-beloved  children.  The  source  of  the  outcry  we  hear  for 
the  Emancipation  of  Women  —  their  emancipation  from  their 
noblest  duty  —  is  that  in  this  materialist  age  men  are  prone  to 
despise  what  is  pure,  lofty,  and  tender,  and  to  exalt  what  is 
coarse,  vulgar,  and  vainglorious. 

When  we  say  that  we  would  see  the  typical  work  of  woman 
centered  in  her  personal  influence  in  the  Home,  we  are  not  asking 
for  arbitrary  and  rigid  hmitations.  We  are  not  calling  out  for 
any  new  legislation  or  urging  pubHc  opinion  to  close  any  womanly 
employment  for  women.  There  are  a  thousand  ways  in  which 
the  activity  of  women  may  be  of  peculiar  value  to  the  com- 
munity, and  many  of  these  necessarily  carry  women  outside 
their  own  houses  and  into  more  or  less  public  institutions.  The 
practice  of  the  ladies  connected  with  our  Church  alone  would 
satisfy  us  how  great  is  the  part  which  women  have  to  play  in 
teaching,  in  directing  moral  and  social  institutions,  in  organizing 
the  higher  standard  of  opinion,  in  inspiring  enthusiasm  in  young 
and  old.  We  are  heartily  with  such  invaluable  work ;  and  we 
find  that  modern  civilization  offers  to  women  as  many  careers 
as  it  offers  to  men. 

All  that  we  ask  is  that  such  work  and  such  careers  shall  be 
founded  on  womanly  ideals,  and  shall  recognize  the  essential 
difference  in  the  social  functions  of  men  and  women.  We 
know  that  in  a  disorganized  condition  of  society  there  are  ter- 
rible accumulations  of  exceptional  and  distressing  personal 
hardship.  Of  course  millions  of  women  have,  and  can  have, 
no  husbands;  hundreds  of  thousands  have  no  parents,  no 
brother,  no  true  family.  No  one  pretends  that  society  is 
without  abundant  room  for  unmarried  women,  and  has  not  a 
mass  of  work  for  women  who  by  circumstances  have  been  de- 
prived of  their  natural  family  and  are  without  any  normal 
home.  Many  of  such  women  we  know  to  be  amongst  the  no- 
blest of  their  sex,  the  very  salt  of  the  earth.  But  their  activity 
still  retains  its  homeUke  beauty,  and  is  still  womanly  and  not 
mannish.  All  that  we  ask  is  that  women,  whether  married  or 
unmarried,  whether  with  families  of  their  own  or   not,  shall 


THE  FUTURE  OF  WOMAN  513 

never  cease  to  feel  like  women,  to  work  as  women  should,  to 
make  us  all  feel  that  they  are  true  women  amongst  us  and  not 
imitation  men. 

We  are  not  now  discussing  any  practical  remedy  for  a  tem- 
porary difficulty;  we  are  only  seeking  to  assert  a  paramount 
law  of  human  nature.  We  are  defending  the  principle  of  the 
womanliness  of  woman  against  the  anarchic  assertors  of  the 
manliness  of  woman.  There  is  a  passionate  party  of  so-called 
reformers,  both  men  and  women,  who  are  crying  out  for  absolute 
assimilation  as  a  principle ;  and  such  is  the  weakness  of  politi- 
cians and  leaders  that  this  coarse  and  ignorant  sophism  is  be- 
coming a  sort  of  badge  of  Radical  energy  and  freedom  from 
prejudice.  With  all  practical  remedies  for  admitted  social 
diseases  we  are  ever  ready  to  sympathize.  In  the  name  of 
mercy  let  us  all  do  our  best  with  the  practical  dilemmas  which 
society  throws  up.  But  let  us  not  attempt  to  cure  them  by  pull- 
ing society  down  from  its  foundations  and  uprooting  the  very 
first  ideas  of  social  order.  Exceptions  and  painful  cases  we 
have  by  the  thousand.  Let  us  struggle  to  help  or  to  mend  them, 
as  exceptions,  and  not  commit  the  folly  of  asserting  that  the 
exception  is  the  rule. 

We  all  know  that  there  are  more  women  in  these  kingdoms 
than  men,  and  not  a  little  perplexity  arises  therefrom.  But 
since  more  males  are  born  than  females,  the  inequality  is  the 
result  of  abnormal  causes  —  the  emigration,  wandering  habits, 
dangerous  trades,  overwork,  and  intemperance  of  men.  There 
are  other  countries,  especially  across  the  Ocean,  where  the  men 
greatly  outnumber  the  women.  It  is  the  first  and  most  urgent 
duty  of  society  to  remedy  this  social  disease,  and  not  to  turn 
society  upside  down  in  order  to  palliate  a  temporary  and  a 
local  want.  Certainly  not,  when  the  so-called  remedy  can  only 
increase  the  disease  by  "debasing  the  moral  currency"  and 
desecrating  the  noblest  duties  of  woman.  Certainly,  no  re- 
formers whatever  can  be  more  eager  than  we  are  to  do  our  best 
to  help  in  any  reasonable  remedy  for  our  social  maladies,  be 
they  what  they  may.     But  the  extent  and  acuteness  of  social 


514  FREDERIC   HARRISON 

maladies  make  us  only  more  anxious  to  defend  the  first  prin- 
ciples of  human  society  —  and  to  us  none  is  so  sacred  as  the 
inherent  and  inalienable  womanliness  of  all  women's  work. 

The  prevalent  sophistry  calls  out  for  complete  freedom  to 
every  individual,  male  or  female,  and  the  abolition  of  all  re- 
straints, legal,  conventional,  or  customary,  which  prevent 
any  adult  from  hving  his  or  her  own  life  at  his  and  her  private 
will.  It  is  specious;  but,  except  in  an  age  of  Nihilism,  such 
anarchic  cries  would  never  be  heard.  It  involves  the  destruc- 
tion of  every  social  institution  together.  The  Family,  the  State, 
the  Church,  the  Nation,  Industry,  social  organization,  law,  —  all 
rest  on  fixed  rules,  which  are  the  standing  contradiction  of  this 
claim  of  universal  personal  liberty  from  restraint.  Society  im- 
plies the  control  of  absolute  individual  license ;  and  this  is  a  claim 
for  absolute  individual  license.  It  is  perfectly  easy  to  find  objec- 
tions and  personal  hardship  in  every  example  of  social  institution. 

Begin  with  marriage.  Many  married  people  would  be  hap- 
pier and,  perhaps,  more  useful,  if  they  could  separate  at  will. 
Therefore  (the  cry  is),  let  all  men  and  women  be  always  free  to 
live  together  or  apart,  when  they  choose,  and  as  long  as  they 
choose,  without  priests,  registrars,  law  courts,  or  scandal.  Many 
parents  are  unworthy  to  bring  up  their  children.  Therefore, 
let  no  parent  have  any  control  over  his  child.  Many  women 
would  be  more  at  ease  and  perhaps  more  able  to  work  in  their 
own  way,  if  they  wore  men's  clothes.  And  some  men,  among 
the  old  and  the  delicate,  might  be  more  comfortable  in  skirts. 
Therefore,  abolish  the  foolish  restrictions  about  Male  and 
Female  dress.  And  this  our  reformers,  it  seems,  are  preparing 
to  do.  Many  men  and  more  women  are,  at  twenty,  better 
fitted  to  "come  of  age"  than  some  men  at  thirty.  Therefore, 
let  every  one  "come  of  age"  when  he  or  she  thinks  fit.  Many 
a  man  who,  through  hunger,  steals  a  turnip  is  an  angel  of  light 
compared  with  a  millionaire  who  speculates.  Therefore,  abolish 
all  laws  against  stealing.  Many  a  foreigner  living  in  England 
knows  far  more  of  politics  than  most  native  electors.  There- 
fore, abolish  all  restrictions  applying  to  "aliens"  as  such. 


THE  FUTURE  OF  WOMAN  515 

Many  a  layman  can  preach  a  better  sermon  than  most  priests, 
can  cure  disease  better  than  some  doctors,  can  argue  a  case 
better  than  certain  barristers,  could  keep  deposits  better  than 
some  bankers,  find  a  thief  quicker  than  most  pohcemen,  and 
drive  a  "hansom"  better  than  some  cabmen.  Therefore  —  it 
is  argued  —  let  every  man,  woman,  and  child  live  with  whomso- 
ever he  or  she  Hke,  wear  breeches  or  petticoats  as  he  or  she  pre- 
fer, put  their  vote  in  a  ballot  box  whenever  they  see  one  at 
hand,  conduct  divine  service,  treat  the  sick,  plead  causes,  coin 
money,  carry  letters,  drive  cabs,  and  arrest  their  neighbors,  as 
they  like,  and  as  long  as  they  like,  and  so  far  as  they  can  get 
others  to  consent.  And  thus  we  shall  get  rid  of  all  personal 
hardships,  all  restrictions  as  to  age,  sex,  and  competence,  and 
all  public  registration ;  we  shall  aboUsh  monopolies,  male  tyr- 
anny, and  social  oppression  generally. 

The  claim  for  the  complete  "emancipation"  of  women  stands 
or  falls  along  with  these  other  examples  of  emancipation.  And 
the  answer  to  it  is  the  same.  The  restriction,  which  in  a  few 
cases  is  needless,  hard,  even  unjust,  is  of  infinite  social  useful- 
ness in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  and  "to  free"  the  few  would 
be  to  inflict  permanent  injury  on  the  mass.  To  make  marriage 
'  a  mere  arrangement  of  two  persons  at  will  would  be  to  introduce 
a  subtle  source  of  misery  into  every  home.  To  leave  women 
free  to  go  about  in  men's  clothes  and  men  free  to  adopt  women's 
clothes,  would  be  to  introduce  unimaginable  coarseness,  vice, 
and  brutalization.  To  leave  every  one  free  to  fill  any  public 
office,  with  or  without  public  guarantee  or  professional  training, 
would  open  the  door  to  continual  fraud,  imposture,  disputes, 
uncertainty,  and  confusion.  It  is  to  prevent  all  these  evils 
that  monopolies,  laws,  conventions,  registers,  and  other  restric- 
tions on  personal  license  exist.  And  the  first  and  most  funda- 
mental of  all  these  restrictions  are  those  which  distinguish  the 
life  of  women  from  that  of  men. 

Not  very  many  reformers  consciously  intend  the  "emanci- 
pation" of  women  to  go  as  far  as  this.  There  is  a  great  deal 
of  playing  with  the  question,  more  or  less  honest,  more  or  less 


5i6  FREDERIC   HARRISON 

serious,  as  there  is  much  playing  with  Socialism,  Agnosticism, 
and  so  forth,  by  people  who  perhaps,  in  their  hearts,  merely 
wish  to  see  women  more  active  and  better  taught,  or  some  of 
the  worst  hardships  of  workmen  redressed,  or  the  dogmas  of 
Orthodoxy  somewhat  relaxed.  But  when  a  great  social  in- 
stitution is  seriously  threatened  we  must  deal  with  the  real  revo- 
lutionists who  have  a  consistent  aim  and  mean  what  they  say. 
And  the  real  revolutionists  aim  at  the  total  "emancipation"  of 
women,  and  by  this  they  mean  that  law,  custom,  convention, 
and  public  opinion  shall  leave  every  adult  woman  free  to  do 
whatever  any  adult  man  is  free  to  do,  and  without  let  or  reproach, 
to  live  in  any  way,  adopt  any  habit,  follow  any  pursuit,  and 
undertake  any  duty,  public  or  private,  which  is  open  or  reserved 
to  men. 

Now  I  deliberately  say  that  this  result  would  be  the  most 
disastrous  to  human  civilization  of  any  which  could  afflict  it  — 
worse  than  to  return  to  slavery  and  polytheism.  If  only  a 
small  minority  of  women  availed  themselves  of  their  "freedom," 
the  beauty  of  womanliness  would  be  darkened  in  every  home. 
Just  as  if  but  a  few  married  people  accepted  the  legalized 
liberty  of  parting  by  consent,  every  husband  and  every  wife 
would  feel  their  married  life  sensibly  precarious  and  unsettled. 
There  is  nothing  that  I  know  of  but  law  and  convention  to  hin- 
der a  fair  percentage  of  women  from  becoming  active  members 
of  Parliament  and  useful  ministers  of  the  Crown,  learned  pro- 
fessors of  Hebrew  and  anatomy,  very  fair  priests,  advocates, 
surgeons,  nay,  tailors,  Joiners,  cab  drivers,  or  soldiers,  if  they 
gave  their  minds  to  it.  The  shouting  which  takes  place  when 
a  woman  passes  a  good  examination,  makes  a  clever  speech, 
manages  well  an  institution,  climbs  a  mountain,  or  makes  a 
perilous  journey  of  discovery,  always  struck  me  as  very  foolish 
and  most  inconsistent.  I  have  so  high  an  opinion  of  the  brains 
and  energy,  the  courage  and  resource  of  women,  that  I  should 
be  indeed  surprised  if  a  fair  percentage  of  women  could  not 
achieve  all  in  these  lines  which  is  expected  of  the  average  man. 
My  estimate  of  women's  powers  is  so  real  and  so  great  that  if 


THE   FUTURE  OF  WOMAN  517 

all  occupations  were  entirely  open  to  women,  I  believe  that 
a  great  many  women  would  distinguish  themselves  in  all  but 
the  highest  range,  and  that,  in  a  corrupted  state  of  public  opin- 
ion, a  very  large  number  of  women  would  waste  their  lives  in 
struggling  after  distinction. 

Would  waste  their  lives,  I  say.  For  they  would  be  striving, 
with  pain  and  toil  and  the  sacrifice  of  all  true  womanly  joys,  to 
obtain  a  lower  prize  for  which  they  are  not  best  fitted,  in  lieu 
of  a  loftier  prize  for  which  they  are  preeminently  fit.  A  lower 
prize,  although  possibly  one  richer  in  money,  in  fame,  or  in 
power,  but  essentially  a  coarser  and  more  material  aim.  And 
in  an  age  like  this  there  is  too  much  reason  to  fear  that  ambition, 
and  the  thirst  for  gain  and  supremacy,  would  tempt  into  the 
unnatural  competition  many  a  fine  and  womanly  nature.  Our 
daughters  continually  desire  to  see  their  names  in  newspapers, 
to  display  the  cheap  glories  of  academic  or  professional  honors, 
to  contemplate  their  bankers'  pass  books  in  private,  and  to 
advertise  in  public  their  athletic  record. 

Let  us  teach  them  that  this  specious  agitation  must  ultimately 
degrade  them,  sterilize  them,  unsex  them.  The  glory  of  woman 
is  to  be  tender,  loving,  pure,  inspiring  in  her  home ;  it  is  to  raise 
the  moral  tone  of  every  household,  to  refine  every  man  with 
whom,  as  wife,  daughter,  sister,  or  friend,  she  has  intimate  con- 
verse ;  to  form  the  young,  to  stimulate  society,  to  mitigate  the 
harshness  and  cruelty  and  vulgarity  of  life  everywhere.  And  it 
is  no  glory  to  woman  to  forsake  all  this  and  to  read  for  honors 
with  towelled  head  in  a  college  study,  to  fight  with  her  own 
brother  for  a  good  "practice,"  to  spend  the  day  in  offices  and  the 
night  in  the  "House."  These  things  have  to  be  done  —  and 
men  have  to  do  them ;  it  is  their  nature.  But  the  other,  the 
higher  duties  of  love,  beauty,  patience,  and  compassion,  can  only 
be  performed  by  women,  and  by  women  only  so  long  as  it  is 
recognized  to  be  their  true  and  essential  field. 

It  is  impossible  to  do  both  together.  Women  must  choose 
to  be  either  women  or  abortive  men.  They  cannot  be  both 
women  and  men.     When  men  and  women  are  once  started  as 


5i8  FREDERIC  HARRISON 

competitors  in  the  same  fierce  race,  as  rivals  and  opponents 
instead  of  companions  and  helpmates,  with  the  same  habits, 
the  same  ambitions,  the  same  engrossing  toil,  and  the  same  pubUc 
lives,  Woman  will  have  disappeared,  society  will  consist  of  in- 
dividuals distinguished  physiologically,  as  are  horses  or  dogs, 
into  male  and  female  specimens.  Family  will  mean  groups  of 
men  and  women  who  live  in  common,  and  Home  will  mean 
the  place  where  the  group  collects  for  shelter. 

The  Family  is  the  real  social  unit,  and  what  society  has  to 
do  is  to  promote  the  good  of  the  Family.  And  in  the  Family 
woman  is  as  completely  supreme  as  is  man  in  the  State.  And 
for  all  moral  purposes  the  Family  is  more  vital,  more  beautiful, 
more  universal  than  the  State.  To  keep  the  Family  true, 
refined,  affectionate,  faithful,  is  a  grander  task  than  to  govern 
the  State;  it  is  a  task  which  needs  the  whole  energies,  the  en- 
tire life  of  Woman.  To  mix  up  her  sacred  duty  with  the  coarser 
occupations  of  politics  and  trade  is  to  unfit  her  for  it  as  com- 
pletely as  if  a  priest  were  to  embark  in  the  business  of  a  money- 
lender. That  such  primary  social  truths  were  ever  forgotten 
at  all  is  one  of  the  portents  of  this  age  of  skepticism,  mammon- 
worship,  and  false  glory.  Whilst  the  embers  of  the  older  Chiv- 
alry and  Religion  retained  their  warmth,  no  decent  man,  much 
less  woman,  could  be  found  to  throw  ridicule  on  the  chivalrous 
and  saintly  ideal  of  woman  as  man's  guardian  angel  and  queen 
of  the  home.  But  the  ideals  of  Religion  of  old  are  grown  faint 
and  out  of  fashion,  and  the  priest  of  to-day  is  too  often  willing 
to  go  with  the  times.  Is  it  to  be  left  to  the  Religion  of  Hu- 
manity to  defend  the  primeval  institutions  of  society?  Let 
us  then  honor  the  old-world  image  of  Woman  as  being  relieved 
by  man  from  the  harder  tasks  of  industry,  from  the  defense  and 
management  of  the  State,  in  order  that  she  may  set  herself  to 
train  up  each  generation  to  be  worthier  than  the  last,  and  may 
make  each  home  in  some  sense  a  heaven  of  peace  on  earth. 


XIX 

THE    MORAL   EQUIVALENT   OF  WARi 

William  James 

[The  Moral  Equivalent  of  War,  the  last  public  utterance  of  William  James, 
15  significant  as  expressing  the  opinions  of  a  practical  psychologist  on  a  ques- 
tion of  growing  popular  interest.  For  the  past  fifteen  years  the  movement 
for  promoting  international  peace  has  been  enlisting  the  support  of  organi- 
zations and  individuals  the  world  over.  That  this  is  a  question  on  which 
much  may  be  said  for  the  opposition,  James,  though  a  pacificist,  admits  with 
his  usual  fair-mindedness,  pointing  out  that  militarism  is  the  sole  nourisher 
of  certain  human  virtues  that  the  world  cannot  let  die,  and  that  until  the 
peace  party  devises  some  substitute,  some  moral  equivalent,  for  the  dis- 
ciplinary value  of  war,  their  Utopian  goal  is  neither  desirable  nor  possible. 
His  own  solution  is  advanced  not  as  a  practical  measure,  but  merely  as  an 
illustration  to  show  that  the  world  is  full  of  opportunities  for  the  peaceful 
development  and  continuation  of  the  martial  qualities  of  human  life. 

This  essay  was  written  for  general  dissemination  as  a  publication  of  the 
American  Association  for  International  Conciliation,  February,  19 lo.  As  it 
not  only  presents  a  peace  program  but  defines  as  well  the  most  familiar 
arguments  of  the  war  party,  no  militarist  article  has  been  included,  although 
it  may  be  mentioned  that  a  suggestive  apology  for  war  is  to  be  found  among 
De  Quincey's  Essays  and  also  in  Ruskin's  Crown  of  Wild  Olive.  Additional 
documents  on  conciliation,  approaching  the  question  from  innumerable 
points  of  view,  are  published  by  the  Association  mentioned  above.] 

The  war  against  war  is  going  to  be  no  holiday  excursion  or 
camping  party.  The  military  feelings  are  too  deeply  grounded 
to  abdicate  their  place  among  our  ideals  until  better  substitutes 
are  offered  than  the  glory  and  shame  that  come  to  nations  as 
well  as  to  individuals  from  the  ups  and  downs  of  politics  and  the 

1  Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  American  Association  for  International 
Conciliation,  and  of  Messrs.  Longmans,  Green,  and  Company,  publishers  oi 
Memories  and  Studies,  by  William  James. 

S19 


520  WILLIAM  JAMES 

vicissitudes  of  trade.  There  is  something  highly  paradoxical 
in  the  modern  man's  relation  to  war.  Ask  all  our  millions, 
north  and  south,  whether  they  would  vote  now  (were  such  a 
thing  possible)  to  have  our  war  for  the  Union  expunged  from 
history,  and  the  record  of  a  peaceful  transition  to  the  present 
time  substituted  for  that  of  its  marches  and  battles,  and  probably 
hardly  a  handful  of  eccentrics  would  say  yes.  Those  ancestors, 
those  efforts,  those  memories  and  legends,  are  the  most  ideal  part 
of  what  we  now  own  together,  a  sacred  spiritual  possession  worth 
more  than  all  the  blood  poured  out.  Yet  ask  those  same  people 
whether  they  would  be  willing  in  cold  blood  to  start  another 
civil  war  now  to  gain  another  similar  possession,  and  not  one 
man  or  woman  would  vote  for  the  proposition.  In  modern 
eyes,  precious  though  wars  may  be,  they  must  not  be  waged  solely 
for  the  sake  of  the  ideal  harvest.  Only  when  forced  upon  one, 
only  when  an  enemy's  injustice  leaves  us  no  alternative,  is  a 
war  now  thought  permissible. 

It  was  not  thus  in  ancient  times.  The  earlier  men  were  hunt- 
ing men,  and  to  hunt  a  neighboring  tribe,  kill  the  males,  loot  the 
village  and  possess  the  females,  was  the  most  profitable,  as  well 
as  the  most  exciting,  way  of  living.  Thus  were  the  more  martial 
tribes  selected,  and  in  chiefs  and  peoples  a  pure  pugnacity  and 
love  of  glory  came  to  mingle  with  the  more  fundamental  appetite 
for  plunder. 

Modern  war  is  so  expensive  that  we  feel  trade  to  be  a  better 
avenue  to  plunder;  but  modern  man  inherits  all  the  innate 
pugnacity  and  all  the  love  of  glory  of  his  ancestors.  Showing 
war's  irrationality  and  horror  is  of  no  effect  upon  him.  The 
horrors  make  the  fascination.  War  is  the  strong  life ;  it  is  life 
in  extremis;  war  taxes  are  the  only  ones  men  never  hesitate 
to  pay,  as  the  budgets  of  all  nations  show  us. 

History  is  a  bath  of  blood.  The  Iliad  is  one  long  recital  of 
how  Diomedes  and  Ajax,'  Sarpedon  and  Hector,  killed.  No 
detail  of  the  wounds  they  made  is  spared  us,  and  the  Greek 
mind  fed  upon  the  story.  Greek  history  is  a  panorama  of  jin- 
goism and  imperialism  —  war  for  war's  sake,  all  the  citizens 


THE  MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR  521 

being  warriors.  It  is  horrible  reading,  because  of  the  irration- 
aUty  of  it  all  —  save  for  the  purpose  of  making  "history"  — 
and  the  history  is  that  of  the  utter  ruin  of  a  civilization  in  intel- 
lectual respects  perhaps  the  highest  the  earth  has  ever  seen. 

Those  wars  were  purely  piratical.  Pride,  gold,  women,  slaves, 
excitement,  were  their  only  motives.  In  the  Peloponnesian  war, 
for  example,  the  Athenians  asked  the  inhabitants  of  Melos 
(the  island  where  the  "Venus  of  Milo"  was  found),  hitherto 
neutral,  to  own  their  lordship.  The  envoys  meet,  and  hold  a 
debate  which  Thucydides  gives  in  full,  and  which,  for  sweet 
reasonableness  of  form,  would  have  satisfied  Matthew  Arnold. 
"The  powerful  exact  what  they  can,"  said  the  Athenians,  "and 
the  weak  grant  what  they  must."  When  the  Meleans  say  that 
sooner  than  be  slaves  they  will  appeal  to  the  gods,  the  Athenians 
reply:  "Of  the  gods  we  believe  and  of  men  we  know  that,  by 
a  law  of  their  nature,  wherever  they  can  rule  they  will.  This 
law  was  not  made  by  us,  and  we  are  not  the  first  to  have  acted 
upon  it ;  we  did  but  inherit  it,  and  we  know  that  you  and  all 
mankind,  if  you  were  as  strong  as  we  are,  would  do  as  we  do.  So 
much  for  the  gods  ;  we  have  told  you  why  we  expect  to  stand  as 
high  in  their  good  opinion  as  you."  Well,  the  Meleans  still 
refused,  and  their  town  was  taken.  "The  Athenians,"  Thu- 
cydides quietly  says,  "thereupon  put  to  death  all  who  were  of 
military  age  and  made  slaves  of  the  women  and  children.  They 
then  colonized  the  island,  sending  thither  five  hundred  settlers 
of  their  own." 

Alexander's  career  was  piracy  pure  and  simple,  nothing  but 
an  orgy  of  power  and  plunder,  made  romantic  by  the  character 
of  the  hero.  There  was  no  rational  principle  in  it,  and  the 
moment  he  died  his  generals  and  governors  attacked  one  another. 
The  cruelty  of  those  times  is  incredible.  When  Rome  finally 
conquered  Greece,  Paulus  ^milius  was  told  by  the  Roman 
Senate  to  reward  his  soldiers  for  their  toil  by  "givdng"  them  the 
old  kingdom  of  Epirus.  They  sacked  seventy  cities  and  carried 
off  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  inhabitants  as  slaves.  How 
many  they  killed  I  know  not ;   but  in  Etolia  they  killed  all  the 


522  WILLIAM  JAMES 

senators,  five  hundred  and  fifty  in  number.  Brutus  was  "the 
noblest  Roman  of  them  all,"  but  to  reanimate  his  soldiers  on 
the  eve  of  Philippi  he  similarly  promises  to  give  them  the 
cities  of  Sparta  and  Thessalonica  to  ravage,  if  they  win  the 
fight. 

Such  was  the  gory  nurse  that  trained  societies  to  cohesiveness. 
We  inherit  the  warlike  type ;  and  for  most  of  the  capacities  of 
heroism  that  the  human  race  is  full  of  we  have  to  thank  this 
cruel  history.  Dead  men  tell  no  tales,  and  if  there  were  any 
tribes  of  other  type  than  this  they  have  left  no  survivors.  Our 
ancestors  have  bred  pugnacity  into  our  bone  and  marrow,  and 
thousands  of  years  of  peace  won't  breed  it  out  of  us.  The  popu- 
lar imagination  fairly  fattens  on  the  thought  of  wars.  Let  public 
opinion  once  reach  a  certain  fighting  pitch,  and  no  ruler  can 
withstand  it.  In  the  Boer  war  both  governments  began  with 
bluff,  but  couldn't  stay  there,  the  military  tension  was  too  much 
for  them.  In  1898  our  people  had  read  the  word  WAR  in  letters 
three  inches  high  for  three  months  in  every  newspaper.  The 
pHant  politician  McKinley  was  swept  away  by  their  eagerness, 
and  our  squalid  war  with  Spain  became  a  necessity. 

At  the  present  day,  cixdlized  opinion  is  a  curious  mental 
mixture.  The  military  instincts  and  ideals  are  as  strong  as 
ever,  but  are  confronted  by  reflective  criticisms  which  sorely 
curb  their  ancient  freedom.  Innumerable  writers  are  showing 
up  the  bestial  side  of  military  service.  Pure  loot  and  mastery 
seem  no  longer  morally  avowable  motives,  and  pretexts  must 
be  found  for  attributing  them  solely  to  the  enemy.  England 
and  we,  our  army  and  navy  authorities  repeat  without  ceasing, 
arm  solely  for  "peace,"  Germany  and  Japan  it  is  who  are  bent 
on  loot  and  glory.  "Peace"  in  military  mouths  to-day  is  a 
synonym  for  "war  expected."  The  word  has  become  a  pure 
provocative,  and  no  government  wishing  peace  sincerely  should 
allow  it  ever  to  be  printed  in  a  newspaper.  Every  up-to-date 
dictionary  should  say  that  "peace"  and  "war"  mean  the  same 
thing,  now  in  posse,^  now  in  actu.^  It  may  even  reasonably  be 
^  As  a  possibility.  ^  Editors.  ^  As  a  fact.  —  Editors. 


THE   MORAL  EQUIV.\LENT  OF  WAR  523 

said  that  the  intensely  sharp  competitive  preparation  for  war 
by  the  nations  is  the  real  war,  permanent,  unceasing ;  and  that 
the  battles  are  only  a  sort  of  public  verification  of  the  mastery 
gained  during  the  "peace"  interval. 

It  is  plain  that  on  this  subject  civilized  man  has  developed  a  "^ 
sort  of  double  personality.  If  we  take  European  nations,  no 
legitimate  interest  of  any  one  of  them  would  seem  to  justify 
the  tremendous  destructions  which  a  war  to  compass  it  would 
necessarily  entail.  It  would  seem  as  though  common  sense 
and  reason  ought  to  find  a  way  to  reach  agreement  in  every 
conflict  of  honest  interests.  I  myself  think  it  our  bounden  duty 
to  believe  in  such  international  rationality  as  possible.  But, 
as  things  stand,  I  see  how  desperately  hard  it  is  to  bring  the 
peace  party  and  the  war  party  together,  and  I  believe  that  the 
difiiculty  is  due  to  certain  deficiencies  in  the  program  of  pacif- 
icism which  set  the  militarist  imagination  strongly,  and  to  a  cer- 
tain extent  justifiably,  against  it.  In  the  whole  discussion  both 
sides  are  on  imaginative  and  sentimental  ground.  It  is  but  one 
Utopia  against  another,  and  everything  one  says  must  be 
abstract  and  hypothetical.  Subject  to  this  criticism  and  cau- 
tion, 1  will  try  to  characterize  in  abstract  strokes  the  opposite 
imaginative  forces,  and  point  out  what  to  my  own  very  fallible 
mind  seems  the  best  Utopian  hypothesis,  the  most  promising 
line  of  conciliation. 

In  my  remarks,  pacificist  though  I  am,  I  will  refuse  to  speak  of 
the  bestial  side  of  the  war  regime  (already  done  justice  to  by 
many  writers)  and  consider  only  the  higher  aspects  of  milita- 
ristic sentiment.  Patriotism  no  one  thinks  discreditable ;  nor 
does  any  one  deny  that  war  is  the  romance  of  history.  But 
inordinate  ambitions  are  the  soul  of  every  patriotism,  and  the 
possibility  of  violent  death  the  soul  of  all  romance.  The  mili- 
tarily patriotic  and  romantic-minded  everywhere,  and  especially  -7^ 
the  professional  military  class,  refuse  to  admit  for  a  moment  |  , 
that" war  may  be  a  transitory  phenomenon  in  social  evolution. 
The  notion  of  a  sheep's  paradise  like  that  revolts,  they  say,  our 
higher  imagination.     Where  then  would  be  the  steeps  of  life? 


524  WILLIAM  JAMES 

If  war  had  ever  stopped,  we  should  have  to  reinvent  it,  on  this 
view,  to  redeem  life  from  flat  degeneration. 

Reflective  apologists  for  war  at  the  present  day  all  take  it 
religiously.  It  is  a  sort  of  sacrament.  Its  profits  are  to  the  van- 
quished as  well  as  to  the  victor ;  and  quite  apart  from  any  ques- 
tion of  profit,  it  is  an  absolute  good,  we  are  told,  for  it  is  human 
)^ nature  at  its  highest  dynamic.  Its  "horrors"  are  a  cheap  price 
to  pay  for  rescue  from  the  only  alternative  supposed,  of  a  world 
of  clerks  and  teachers,  of  coeducation  and  zoophily,  of  "con- 
sumer's leagues"  and  "associated  charities,"  of  industrialism 
unlimited  and  feminism  unabashed.  No  scorn,  no  hardness,  no 
valor  any  more  !     Fie  upon  such  a  cattleyard  of  a  planet ! 

So  far  as  the  central  essence  of  this  feeling  goes,  no  healthy- 
minded  person,  it  seems  to  me,  can  help  to  some  degree  partaking 
of  it.  Militarism  is  the  great  preserver  of  our  ideals  of  hardi- 
hood, and  human  life  with  no  use  for  hardihood  would  be  con- 
temptible. Without  risks  or  prizes  for  the  darer,  history  would 
be  insipid  indeed ;  and  there  is  a  type  of  military  character  which 
every  one  feels  that  the  race  should  never  cease  to  breed,  for 
every  one  is  sensitive  to  its  superiority.  The  duty  is  incumbent 
on  mankind,  of  keeping  military  characters  in  stock  —  of  keeping 
them,  if  not  for  use,  then  as  ends  in  themselves  and  as  pure  pieces 
of  perfection,  —  so  that  Roosevelt's  weaklings  and  mollycoddles 
may  not  end  by  making  everything  else  disappear  from  the  face 
of  nature. 

This  natural  sort  of  feeling  forms,  I  think,  the  innermost  soul 
of  army  writings.  Without  any  exception  known  to  me,  mili- 
tarist authors  take  a  highly  mystical  view  of  their  subject,  and 
regard  war  as  a  biological  or  sociological  necessity,  uncontrolled 
by  ordinary  psychological  checks  and  motives.  When  the  time 
of  development  is  ripe  the  war  must  come,  reason  or  no  reason, 
for  the  justifications  pleaded  are  invariably  fictitious.  War  is,  in 
short,  a  permanent  human  obligation.  General  Homer  Lea,  in  his 
recent  book,  The  Faforo/Zgworawc^,  plants  himself  squarely  on  this 
ground.  Readiness  for  war  is  for  him  the  essence  of  nationality, 
and  ability  in  it  the  supreme  measure  of  the  health  of  nations. 


THE  MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR  525 

Nations,  General  Lea  says,  are  never  stationary  —  they  must 
necessarily  expand  or  shrink,  according  to  their  vitality  or  de- 
crepitude. Japan  now  is  culminating ;  and  by  the  fatal  law  in 
question  it  is  impossible  that  her  statesmen  should  not  long  since 
have  entered,  with  extraordinary  foresight,  upon  a  vast  policy  of 
conquest  —  the  game  in  which  the  first  moves  were  her  wars 
with  China  and  Russia  and  her  treaty  with  England,  and  of 
which  the  final  objective  is  the  capture  of  the  Philippines,  the 
Hawaiian  Islands,  Alaska,  and  the  whole  of  our  coast  west  of 
the  Sierra  Passes.  This  will  give  Japan  what  her  ineluctable 
vocation  as  a  state  absolutely  forces  her  to  claim,  the  possession 
of  the  entire  Pacific  Ocean ;  and  to  oppose  these  deep  designs  we 
Americans  have,  according  to  our  author,  nothing  but  our  con- 
ceit, our  ignorance,  our  commercialism,  our  corruption,  and  our 
feminism.  General  Lea  makes  a  minute  technical  comparison 
of  the  military  strength  which  we  at  present  could  oppose  to  the 
strength  of  Japan,  and  concludes  that  the  islands,  Alaska,  Oregon, 
and  Southern  California,  would  fall  almost  without  resistance, 
that  San  Francisco  must  surrender  in  a  fortnight  to  a  Japanese 
investment,  that  in  three  or  four  months  the  war  would  be  over, 
and  our  Republic,  unable  to  regain  what  it  had  heedlessly  neg- 
lected to  protect  sufficiently,  would  then  "disintegrate,"  until 
perhaps  some  Caesar  should  arise  to  weld  us  again  into  a  nation. 

A  dismal  forecast  indeed  !  Yet  not  unplausible,  if  the  mental- 
ity of  Japan's  statesmen  be  of  the  Caesarian  type  of  which  history 
shows  so  many  examples,  and  which  is  all  that  General  Lea  seems 
able  to  imagine.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  women  can 
no  longer  be  the  mothers  of  Napoleonic  or  Alexandrian  char- 
acters; and  if  these  come  in  Japan  and  find  .their  opportunity, 
just  such  surprises  as  The  Valor  of  Ignorance  paints  may  lurk  in 
ambush  for  us.  Ignorant  as  we  still  are  of  the  innermost  recesses 
of  Japanese  mentality,  we  may  be  foolhardy  to  disregard  such 
possibilities. 

Other  militarists  are  more  complex  and  more  moral  in  their 
considerations.  The  Philosophie  des  Krieges,  by  S.  R.  Stein- 
metz,  is  a  good  example.     War,  according  to  this  author,  is  an 


/ 


526  WILLIAM  JAMES 

ordeal  instituted  by  God,  who  weighs  the  nations  in  its  balance. 
It  is  the  essential  form  of  the  state,  and  the  only  function  in 
which  peoples  can  employ  all  their  powers  at  once  and  conver- 
gently.  No  victory  is  possible  save  as  the  resultant  of  a  totahty 
of  virtues,  no  defeat  for  which  some  vice  or  weakness  is  not  re- 
sponsible. FideHty,  cohesiveness,  tenacity,  heroism,  conscience, 
education,  inventiveness,  economy,  wealth,  physical  health  and 
vigor  —  there  isn't  a  moral  or  intellectual  point  of  superiority 
that  doesn't  tell,  when  God  holds  his  assizes  and  hurls  the  peoples 
upon  one  another.  Die  Weltgeschichte  ist  das  Weltgericht^;  and 
Dr.  Steinmetz  does  not  believe  that  in  the  long  run  chance  and 
luck  play  any  part  in  apportioning  the  issues. 

The  virtues  that  prevail,  it  must  be  noted,  are  virtues  anyhow, 
superiorities  that  count  in  peaceful  as  well  as  in  military  com- 
petition ;  but  the  strain  on  them,  being  infinitely  intenser  in  the 
latter  case,  makes  war  infinitely  more  searching  as  a  trial.     No 
ordeal  is  comparable  to  its  winnowings.     Its  dread  hammer  is 
the  welder  of  men  into  cohesive  states,  and  nowhere  but  in  such 
states  can  human  nature  adequately  develop  its  capacity.     The 
only  alternative  is  "degeneration." 
T'-     Dr.  Steinmetz  is  a  conscientious  thinker,  and  his  book,  short  as 
it  is,  takes  much  into  account.    Its  upshot  can,  it  seems  to  me,  be 
summed  up  in  Simon  Patten's  word,  that  mankind  was  nursed 
in  pain  and  fear,  and  that  the  transition  to  a  "ple_asure  economy 'H^ 
may  be  fatal  to  a  being  wielding  no  powers  of  defense  against  its 
disintegrative  influences.     Hwe  speak  of  the  fear  of  emancipation 
from  the  fear  regime,  we  put  the  whole  situation  into  a  single 
phrasej  fear  regarding  ourselves  now  takmg  the  place  of  the  an- 
cient fear  of  the  enemy. 
Turn  the^fear  over  as  I  will  in  my  mind,  it  all  seems  to  lead 
/l^^ack  to  two  unwillingnesses  of  the  imaginatioftfone  aesthetic,  and 
the  other  •'moral:    unwillingness,  first  to  envisage  a  future  in 
which  army  life,  with  its  many  elements  of  charm,  shall  be  for- 
ever impossible,  and  in  which  the  destinies  of  peoples  shall  never- 
more be  decided  quickly,  thrillingly,  and  tragically,  by  force,  but 
1  The  history  of  the  world  is  the  judgment  of  the  world.  —  Editors. 


THE  MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR  527 

only  gradually  and  insipidly  by  "evolution";  and,  secondly 
unwillingness  to  see  the  supreme  theater  of  human  strenuousness 
closed,  and  the  splendid  military  aptitudes  of  men  doomed  to 
keep  always  in  a  state  of  latency  and  never  show  themselves  in 
action.  These  insistent  unwillingnesses,  no  less  than  other 
aesthetic  and  ethical  insistencies,  have,  it  seems  to  me,  to  be  lis- 
tened to  and  respected.  One  cannot  meet  them  effectively  by 
mere  counter-insistency  on  war's  expensiveness  and  horror.  The 
horror  makes  the  thrill ;  and  when  the  question  is  of  getting  the 
extremest  and  supremest  out  of  human  nature,  talk  of  expense 
sounds  ignominious.  The  weakness  of  so  much  merely  negative 
criticism  is  evident  —  pacificism  makes  no  converts  from  the 
military  party.  The  military  party  denies  neither  the  bestiality 
nor  the  horror,  nor  the  expense ;  it  only  says  that  these  things 
tell  but  half  the  story.  It  only  says  that  war  is  worth  them ;  that, 
taking  human  nature  as  a  whole,  its  wars  are  its  best  protection 
against  its  weaker  and  more  cowardly  self,  and  that  mankind 
cannot  afford  to  adopt  a  peace  economy.  V/ 

Pacificists  ought  to  enter  more  deeply  into  the  sesthetical  and 
ethical  point  of  view  of  their  opponents.  Do  that  first  in  any 
controversy,  says  J.  J.  Chapman  ;  then  move  the  point,  and  your 
opponent  will  follow.  So_long_as  anti-militarists  propose  no  sub- 
stitute for  war's  disciplinary  function,  no  moral  equivalent  of  war, 
analogous,  as  one  might  say,  to  the  mechanical  equivalent  of 
heat,  so  long  they  fail  to  realize  the  full  inwardness  of  the  situa- 
tion. And  as  a  rule  they  do  fail.  The  duties,  penalties,  and 
sanctions  pictured  in  the  Utopias  they  paint  are  all  too  weak  and 
tame  to  touch  the  military  minded.  Tolstoi's  pacificism  is  the 
only  exception  to  this  rule,  for  it  is  profoundly  pessimistic  as  re- 
gards all  this  world's  values,  and  makes  the  fear  of  the  Lord  fur- 
nish the  moral  spur  provided  elsewhere  by  the  fear  of  the  enemy. 
But  our  socialistic  peace  advocates  all  believe  absolutely  in  this 
world's  values ;  and  instead  of  the  fear  of  the  Lord  and  the  fear 
of  the  enemy,  the  only  fear  they  reckon  with  is  the  fear  of  pov- 
erty if  one  be  lazy.  This  weakness  pervades  all  the  socialistic 
literature  with  which  I  am  acquainted.     Even  in  Lowes  Dickin- 


528  WILLIAM  JAMES 

son's  exquisite  dialogue/  high  wages  and  short  hours  are  the  only 
forces  invoked  for  overcoming  man's  distaste  for  repulsive  kinds 
of  labor.  Meanwhile  men  at  large  still  live  as  they  always  have 
lived,  under  a  pain-and-fear  economy  —  for  those  of  us  who  live 
in  an  ease  economy  are  but  an  island  in  the  stormy  ocean  —  and 
the  whole  atmosphere  of  present-day  Utopian  literature  tastes 
mawkish  and  dishwatery  to  people  who  still  keep  a  sense  for  life's 
more  bitter  flavors.     It  suggests,  in  truth,  ubiquitous  inferiority. 

Inferiority  is  always  with  us,  and  merciless  scorn  of  it  is  the  key- 
note of  the  military  temper.  "Dogs,  would  you  live  forever?" 
shouted  Frederick  the  Great.  "Yes,"  say  our  Utopians,  "let  us 
live  forever,  and  raise  our  level  gradually."  The  best  thing 
about  our  "  inferiors  "  to-day  is  that  they  are  as  tough  as  nails,  and 
physically  and  morally  almost  as  insensitive.  Utopianism  would 
see  them  soft  and  squeamish,  while  militarism  would  keep  their 
callousness,  but  transfigure  it  into  a  meritorious  characteristic, 
needed  by  "the  service,"  and  redeemed  by  that  from  the  sus- 
picion of  inferiority.  All  the  quahties  of  a  man  acquire  dignity 
when  he  knows  that  the  service  of  the  collectivity  that  owns  him 
needs  them.  If  proud  of  the  collectivity,  his  own  pride  rises  in 
proportion.  No  collectivity  is  like  an  army  for  nourishing  such 
pride ;  but  it  has  to  be  confessed  that  the  only  sentiment  which 
the  image  of  pacific  cosmopolitan  industrialism  is  capable  of 
arousing  in  countless  worthy  breasts  is  shame  at  the  idea  of  be- 
longing to  such  a  collectivity.  It  is  obvious  that  the  United 
States  of  America  as  they  exist  to-day  impress  a  mind  like  Gen- 
eral Lea's  as  so  much  human  blubber.  Where  is  the  sharpness 
and  precipitousness,  the  contempt  for  life,  whether  one's  own,  or 
another's?  Where  is  the  savage  "yes"  and  "no,"  the  uncondi- 
tional duty  ?  Where  is  the  conscription  ?  Where  is  the  blood 
tax  ?    Where  is  anything  that  one  feels  honored  by  belonging  to  ? 

Having  said  thus  much  in  preparation,  I  will  now  confess  my 
own  Utopia.     I  devoutly  believe  in  the  reign  of  peace  and  in  the_ 
gradual  advent  of  some  sort  of  a  socialistic  equilibrium.     The 
fatalistic  view  of  the  war  function  is  to  me  nonsense,  for  I  knowyil 

^Justice  and  Liberty,  N.  Y.,  1909.  "  "  ~^ 


THE   MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR  529 

that  war-making  is  due  to  definite  motives  and  subject  to  pruden- 
tial checks  and  reasonable  criticisms,  just  like  any  other  form  of 
enterprise.  And  when  whole  nations  are  the  armies,  and  the 
science  of  destruction  vies  in  intellectual  refinement  with  the 
sciences  of  production,  I  see  that  war  becomes  absurd  and  im- 
possible from  its  own  monstrosity.  Extravagant  ambitions  will 
have  to  be  replaced  by  reasonable  claims,  and  nations  must  make 
common  cause  against  them.  I  see  no  reason  why  all  this  should 
not  apply  to  yellow  as  well  as  to  white  countries,  and  I  look  for- 
ward to  a  future  when  acts  of  war  shall  be  formally  outlawed  as 
between  civilized  peoples. 

All  these  beliefs  of  mine  put  me  squarely  into  the  anti-mili- 
tarist party.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  peace  either  ought  to  be 
or  will  be  permanent  on  this  globe,  unless  the  states  pacifically 
organized  preserve  some  of  the  old  elements  of  army  discipline. 
A  permanently  successful  peace  economy  cannot  be  a  simple 
pleasure  economy.  In  the  more  or  less  socialistic  future  towards 
which  mankind  seems  drifting  we  must  still  subject  ourselves  col- 
lectively to  these  severities  which  answer  to  our  real  position  upon 
this  only  partly  hospitable  globe.  We  must  make  new  energies 
and  hardihoods  continue  the  manliness  to  which  the  military 
mind  so  faithfully  clings.  Martial  virtues  must  be  the  enduring 
cement ;  intrepidity,  contempt  of  softness,  surrender  of  private 
interest,  obedience  to  command,  must  still  remain  the  rock  upon 
which  states  are  built  —  unless,  indeed,  we  wish  for  dangerous 
reactions  against  commonwealths  fit  only  for  contempt,  and 
liable  to  invite  attack  whenever  a  center  of  crystallization  for 
military-minded  enterprise  gets  formed  anywhere  in  their  neigh- 
borhood. 

The  war  party  is  assuredly  right  in  afl&rming  and  reaffirming 
that  the  martial  virtues,  although  originally  gained  by  the  race 
through  war,  are  absolute  and  permanent  human  goods.  Patri- 
otic pride  and  ambition  in  their  military  form  are,  after  all,  only 
specifications  of  a  more  general  competitive  passion.  They  are 
its  first  form,  but  that  is  no  reason  for  supposing  them  to  be  its 
last  form.     Men  now  are  proud  of  belonging  to  a  conquering 


530  WILLIAM  JAMES 

nation,  and  without  a  murmur  they  lay  down  their  persons  and 
their  wealth,  if  by  so  doing  they  may  fend  ofif  subjection.  But 
who  can  be  sure  that  other  aspects  of  one^s  country  may  not,  with 
time  and  education  and  suggestion  enough,  come  to  be  regarded 
with  similarly  effective  feelings  of  pride  and  shame?  Why 
should  men  not  some  day  feel  that  it  is  worth  a  blood  tax  to  be- 
long to  a  collectivity  superior  in  any  ideal  respect  ?  Why  should 
they  not  blush  with  indignant  shame  if  the  community  that  owns 
them  is  vile  in  any  way  whatsoever  ?  Individuals,  daily  more 
numerous,  now  feel  this  civic  passion.  It  is  only  a  question  of 
blowing  on  the  spark  till  the  whole  population  gets  incandescent, 
and  on  the  ruins  of  the  old  morals  of  military  honor,  a  stable  sys- 
tem of  morals  of  civic  honor  builds  itself  up.  What  the  whole 
community  comes  to  believe  in  grasps  the  individual  as  in  a  vise. 
The  war  function  has  grasped  us  so  far ;  but  constructive  inter- 
ests may  some  day  seem  no  less  imperative,  and  impose  on  the 
individual  a  hardy  lighter  burden.     — 

Let  me  illustrate  my  idea  more  concretely.  There  is  nothing 
to  make  one  indignant  in  the  mere  fact  that  life  is  hard,  that 
men  should  toil  and  suffer  pain.  The  planetary  conditions  once 
for  all  are  such,  and  we  can  stand  it.  But  that  so  many  men,  by 
mere  accidents  of  birth  and  opportunity,  should  have  a  life  of 
nothing  else  but  toil  and  pain  and  hardness  and  inferiority  im- 
posed upon  them,  should  have  no  vacation,  while  others  natively 
no  more  deserving  never  get  any  taste  of  this  campaigning  Hfe  at 
all,  —  this  is  capable  of  arousing  indignation  in  reflective  minds. 
It  may  end  by  seeming  shameful  to  all  of  us  that  some  of  us  have 
nothing  but  campaigning,  and  others  nothing  but  unmanly  ease. 
If  now  —  and  this  is  my  idea  —  there  were,  instead  of  military 
conscription  a  conscription  of  the  whole  youthful  population  to 
form  for  a  certain  number  of  years  a  part  of  the  army  enlisted 
against  Nature,  the  injustice  would  tend  to  be  evened  out,  and 
numerous  other  goods  to  the  commonwealth  would  follow.  The 
military  ideals  of  hardihood  and  discipline  would  be  wrought  into 
the  growing  fiber  of  the  people ;  no  one  would  remain  blind  as  the 
luxurious  classes  now  are  blind,  to  man's  real  relations  to  the 


THE   MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR  531 

globe  he  lives  on,  and  to  the  permanently  sour  and  hard  founda- 
tions of  his  higher  life.  To  coal  and  iron  mines,  to  freight  trains, 
to  fishing  fleets  in  December,  to  dishwashing,  clothes  washing, 
and  window  washing,  to  road  building  and  tunnel  making,  to 
foundries  and  stokeholes,  and  to  the  frames  of  skyscrapers,  would 
our  gilded  youths  be  drafted  off,  according  to  their  choice,  to 
get  the  childishness  knocked  out  of  them,  and  to  come  back  into 
society  with  healthier  sympathies  and  soberer  ideas.  They 
would  have  paid  their  blood  tax,  done  their  own  part  in  the 
immemorial  human  warfare  against  nature,  they  would  tread  the 
earth  more  proudly,  the  women  would  value  them  more  highly, 
they  would  be  better  fathers  and  teachers  of  the  following 
generation. 

Such  a  conscription,  with  the  state  of  public  opinion  that  would 
have  required  it,  and  the  many  moral  fruits  it  would  bear,  would 
preserve  in  the  midst  of  a  pacific  civilization  the  manly  virtues 
which  the  military  party  is  so  afraid  of  seeing  disappear  in  peace. 
We  should  get  toughness  without  callousness,  authority  with  as 
little  criminal  cruelty  as  possible,  and  painful  work  done  cheerily 
because  the  duty  is  temporary,  and  threatens  not,  as  now,  to  de- 
grade the  whole  remainder  of  one's  life.  I  spoke  of  the  "moral 
equivalent"  of  war.  So  far,  war  has  been  the  only  force  that 
can  discipline  a  whole  community,  and  until  an  equivalent  dis- 
cipline is  organized,  I  believe  that  war  must  have  its  way.  But 
I  have  no  serious  doubt  that  the  ordinary  prides  and  shames  of 
social  man,  once  developed  to  a  certain  intensity,  are  capable  of 
organizing  such  a  moral  equivalent  as  I  have  sketched,  or  some 
other  just  as  effective  for  preserving  manliness  of  type.  It  is  but 
a  question  of  time,  of  skillful  propagandism,  and  of  opinion- 
making  men  seizing  historic  opportunities. 

The  martial  type  of  character  can  be  bred  without  war. 
Strenuous  honor  and  disinterestedness  abound  elsewhere.  Priests 
and  medical  men  are  in  a  fashion  educated  to  it,  and  we  should 
all  feel  some  degree  of  it  imperative  if  we  were  conscious  of  our 
work  as  an  obligatory  service  to  the  state.  We  should  be  owned, 
as  soldiers  are  by  the  army,  and  our  pride  would  rise  accordingly. 


532  WILLIAM  JAMES 

We  could  be  poor,  then,  without  humihation,  as  army  officers 
now  are.  The  only  thing  needed  henceforward  is  to  inflame  the 
civic  temper  as  past  history  has  inflamed  the  military  temper. 
H.  G.  Wells,  as  usual,  sees  the  center  of  the  situation.  "  In  many 
ways,"  he  says,  "  military  organization  is  the  most  peaceful  of 
activities.  When  the  contemporary  man  steps  from  the  street, 
of  clamorous  insincere  advertisement,  push,  adulteration,  under- 
selling and  intermittent  employment,  into  the  barrack  yard,  he 
steps  on  to  a  higher  social  plane,  into  an  atmosphere  of  service 
and  cooperation  and  of  infinitely  more  honorable  emulations. 
Here  at  least  men  are  not  flung  out  of  employment  to  degenerate 
because  there  is  no  immediate  work  for  them  to  do.  They  are 
fed  and  drilled  and  trained  for  better  services.  Here  at  least  a 
man  is  supposed  to  win  promotion  by  self-forgetfulness  and  not 
by  self-seeking.  And  beside  the  feeble  and  irregular  endowment 
of  research  by  commercialism,  its  little  short-sighted  snatches  at 
profit  by  innovation  and  scientific  economy,  see  how  remarkable 
is  the  steady  and  rapid  development  of  method  and  appliances 
in  naval  and  military  affairs!  Nothing  is  more  striking  than 
to  compare  the  progress  of  civil  conveniences  which  has  been 
left  almost  entirely  to  the  trader,  to  the  progress  in  military  ap- 
paratus during  the  last  few  decades.  The  house  appliances  of 
to-day,  for  example,  are  little  better  than  they  were  fifty  years 
ago.  A  house  of  to-day  is  still  almost  as  ill-ventilated,  badly 
heated  by  wasteful  fires,  clumsily  arranged  and  furnished  as  the 
house  of  1858.  Houses  a  couple  of  hundred  years  old  are  still 
satisfactory  places  of  residence,  so  little  have  our  standards 
risen.  But  the  rifle  or  battleship  of  fifty  years  ago  was  beyond  all 
comparison  inferior  to  those  we  possess ;  in  power,  in  speed,  in 
convenience  alike.  No  one  has  a  use  now  for  such  superan- 
nuated things."  ^ 

Wells  adds  ^  that  he  thinks  that  the  conceptions  of  order  and 
discipHne,  the  tradition  of  service  and  devotion,  of  physical  fit- 
ness,  unstinted   exertion,  and   universal  responsibility,   which 
universal  military  duty  is  now  teaching  European  nations,  will 
^  First  and  Last  Things,  1908,  p.  215.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  226. 


THE   MORAL  EQUIVALENT  OF  WAR  533 

remain  a  permanent  acquisition,  when  the  last  ammunition  has 
been  used  in  the  fireworks  that  celebrate  the  final  peace.  I 
believe  as  he  does.  It  would  be  simply  preposterous  if  the  only 
force  that  could  work  ideals  of  honor  and  standards  of  efficiency 
into  English  or  American  natures  should  be  the  fear  of  being 
killed  by  the  Germans  or  the  Japanese.  Great  indeed  is  Fear ; 
but  it  is  not,  as  our  military  enthusiasts  believe  and  try  to  make 
us  believe,  the  only  stimulus  known  for  awakening  the  higher 
ranges  of  men's  spiritual  energy.  The  amount  of  alteration  in 
public  opinion  which  my  Utopia  postulates  is  vastly  less  than  the 
difference  between  the  mentality  of  those  black  warriors  who 
pursued  Stanley's  party  on  the  Congo  with  their  cannibal  war 
cry  of  "Meat!  Meat!"  and  that  of  the  "general  staff"  of  any 
civilized  nation.  History  has  seen  the  latter  interval  bridged 
over :  the  former  one  can  be  bridged  over  much  more  easily. 


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